


Conversations in Eb Major

by Pennytextrix



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 16:13:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3331325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pennytextrix/pseuds/Pennytextrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes sharing the lines of lost books, just isn't enough. The only danger is that real words have real consequences.</p><p>PWP, Romance, Angst. This series is my attempt to explain exactly what did and didn’t happen on New Caprica, What Laura and Bill wanted to happen and what I hope happened after ‘A Day in The Life'.  First published 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Like That Night On New Caprica

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who’s interested, the title of the series comes from the idea that musical keys both denote and create, in the audience, specific emotional responses. According to Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806), the key of Eb Major denotes and is evocative of love and unquestioning devotion. (aww!!)
> 
> This is what happens when you obsessively watch that scene in ‘A Day in The Life’, over and over again. 
> 
> This chapter Laura's POV

_"I'm glad you stopped by. I have something for you. This was given to me by one of the colonists down on New Caprica and I forgot about it and Tory found it in a pile of old clothes."_

 

I am always startled by the way you look at me. Your eyes have an incredible intensity about them that leave me with no doubt that you could consume me with that passion. If I let you. If I ever let myself. Yes, that look…right there Bill. The one you're giving me now as I prattle on defending a truly awful and yet thoroughly… entertaining book. I hide my guilty pleasures from you even as I hand them to you on a platter. This book is heavy in my hands - weighed down by the knowledge of the half-truths we circumvent everyday. I hand it to you. These are the things we both know have remained unsaid for too long. This is what we do. Communicate in the spaces between the words of long forgotten books.

My fingers shake with the realisation of it. We have always said the things we cannot say through the sharing of a book. We have picked each title carefully from the meagre libraries available to us at the end of the worlds. We know that each plot we share, each character we become must convey these, our desperate and devoted words to each other:

  
_It's going to be difficult. You have to be strong now._  
  
 _No, I don't think you're a Cylon. I trust you with my life._  
  
 _I'm dying and there's nothing you can do to stop it…. you won't save me by destroying yourself._  
  
 _You have to fight this._  
  
 _I am fighting._  
  
 _Good. I don't want to live without you._

We have lived emotionally. Personally. Through them we have been made real. Livid in ink, alive in paper and bound together between the covers of these - last books- the remnants of our lost civilisation. But this one is different. It whispers something dangerous, and I am afraid when you take it. My hands shake and I am burned by the nascent knowledge of your inevitable rejection. I imagine you sitting at home, reading it on the couch in your quarters, or spread out in your bunk at the end of another impossibly long day, and I hear it whispering to you:  
  
 _I love you…you know that...but I can't say it first._

In my mind you are startled. Angry. You never wanted this. The book is thrown half way across your quarters. You sit up and run a frustrated hand through your greying hair. You are beautiful. 

This thing between us is beautiful but impossible and I snatch my hand away, hiding it in my pocket before you have the time to notice that it shakes and you take hold of it. Clasping it with concern between steady palms. But it is too late; you know me too well by now. You know now that this book will be different, somehow. You know it because I have never been nervous about giving you a book before. You look down at the title before you raise your head to look at me with that almost obscene intensity that tells me that I am already naked under your gaze. I am uncomfortable with it. But I am more desperate for your approval. Desperate for you to accept my gift. I am a powerful woman. I am president of the twelve colonies for Frak's sake. And still I want. I need your approval. The President has a silly schoolgirl crush on the Admiral of the fleet.  
  
 _"Blood runs at midnight?"_

You say it slowly with the slight intonation of a question in your voice and I realise that I was wrong earlier, you want this too. Getting this right means everything to you. You too, have been following the progress of our relationship in the whispers of our shared books. You are aware that this one is somehow different, a turning point perhaps and you want to make sure that you interpret its meaning the way I had intended.

You are asking me what I'm trying to say. Does my blood run at midnight flamed by desire, by love even? Or is this a rejection of everything we have shared and tried so hard not to say. Do I fear that the price we will pay for this flirtation- this affair- For that's what it its really, even if it should remain unconsummated - will be a lack of focus and commitment on both our parts that will lead to the destruction of our people. Will the price of love be paid in the blood of our people? I no longer know what I meant by it. The book has spoken the conflicting feelings I never knew I possessed. The very title speaks of desire, but it is tinged with fear and guilt and blame - it suggests death.

So I tell you the truth. Even though I present it wrapped in a riddle, it is at least the truth. I don't know how this thing between us is going to end, Bill. Is this book the harbinger of danger or desire? I don't know. You see, there's now way of knowing until we try. It is perhaps a little of both. I watch you try and decide on the correct interpretation. There is laughter in my voice at your confusion. I let you know that you aren't the only one struggling for a comprehensive definition.  
  
 _" Don't let the title fool you, it's a pretty good mystery. I think you'll like it."_

I am shocked at the words running out of my mouth faster that I can catch them. I'm not ready for this. I know you don't believe Bill, but it's as if the God's are willing us together. Suddenly I'm sure. I'm as sure of this as I am of the existence of Earth. This is the kind of certainty that comes only from the divine. We are fated. This is going to happen, and let the threads be woven as they may. The God's may want this. I may want this. But I am not ready Bill. I can't face the intensity of it.

You are looking at me with that same strangled blue intensity, and I am welded to the floor drowning in you and these things unsaid. For a moment, I am sure that that you are going to march right over here and kiss me and I can't stop staring at your lips. Can't move for the desire pulsing through me. The wanting/not wanting of it. The curiosity is maddening. What would it be like if you were to....

You break your gaze and I am partly thankful and partly disappointed that you have let me walk away. I turn and pack my bag. I can't look at you right now because if I could see, rather than feel, your wanting urgent eyes that are, at this very moment, burning into my back, it would be me marching over there and kissing you senseless. File after file gets crushed into my bag on top of my foul smelling gym clothes as I try not to remember all the other times we have been like this. So close to it. So close and never touching. Not the way we wanted to anyway. Like that night on New Caprica.  
  
 _Do you ever think about the times much on New Caprica?"_

Damn you. Damn you for never really letting anything go. Damn you for always being inside my thoughts. Inside my head. Now I am going to have to turn and face this. Now I'm going to have to answer every whisper of every book we have ever shared. You are going to make me admit that in the darkness of midnight, when the business of leading what remains of humanity is done for the day, I do not think about the spilt blood of our people. I think of you and my blood runs hot through my veins with thoughts of what would have happened had I been brave enough to bring my hand to your face and draw you to me as I lay in your arms. Instead I left it resting on your chest. That night I told you that we were lucky. We had been given a break from survival. New Caprica was a gift. Even if it was for a short time, we could go about the business of living. So many beautiful words. But as it turns out I was too chicken shit to follow my own advice. Sometimes, I think that surviving is much easier than living. I am afraid to start living and so I pick my words carefully:   
  
_"I try…to think about the good times. Yes I do."_  
  
 _"One night in particular. Stands out. In my mind. You were wearing your really bright red dress. Said you wanted to build a cabin."_

The way you say it is like poetry; all beautiful words, full stops and punctuation that mean nothing and everything. It makes me wonder if in your mind you think about that night in the same way I do. I wonder if it comforts you at midnight. I wonder if it keeps the demons from your door and makes your blood run hot.

The truth is that there are few nights when I don't imagine you touching me the way I'd hoped you would that night. The way I'd planned you would when I wore my red wrap-around with the grey-green top underneath. I couldn't stop hitching it up because it showed more cleavage than I was really happy with. But it had done the job. You stopped playing in the sand pretty quickly for a man obsessed with ancient rivers and alluvial deposits. You are looking at me now just like you looked at me that night on New Caprica. I was so sure you would kiss me then. But you didn't. And you won't now. Just like we are doing now, we smiled and laughed at having caught each other looking. But alone in my cot at night I construct false memories of it. Of how we should have been. 

In my mind we laugh together. I look away and make an attempt to cover up the cleavage you were so admiring a moment ago, but before I can finish you reach out and catch my chin with one of those beautiful, hard, rough hands. I stop fiddling and look up at you questioningly "What?" I smile. It is playful and something else... Almost sultry. "Don't do that." You whisper, your voice cracking. Embarrassed. "You ..ah…It's just that you're so beautiful right now. I just want to look at you." And then you are there in front of me just looking. I fidget. I am unaccustomed to such personal scrutiny. You are edging in. Your hand is in my hair, pulling me towards you. I lick my bottom lip in anticipating apprehension. When I imagine it, it is never a gentle kiss. It is hard and wanting. There is biting and teeth scraping and tongues clashing and bruising hands tight in my hair. I whimper into your mouth. In my fantasies you are always excited by the sounds I make because you are the very opposite of Richard. I don't believe that you would ever make fun of my idiosyncrasies, my vulnerabilities, the way he did. In the midst of this a half forgotten voice chuckles derisively in my ear. "Wow…how desperate are you? Been a while has it?" For him, my whimpers signalled the end of foreplay and by now he would be getting down to the business of frakking me. On a desk, a table, over the arm of a chair or on any hard surface he could find. There was never a bed in sight. He had been a man drunk on his own power. Never on me.

The sand is soft beneath us and I know you will be different. In my fantasy the beach on New Caprica is deserted. In reality there were people everywhere but here we are. Blissfully alone. You lower me to the sand. You weight is crushing but welcome as you place a knee between my legs and you trace a path across my neck and around my ear with your tongue. "Laura…" You whisper it reverently. My name catching on the desire lodged in your throat. I create this fantasy. Willing it into reality more often than others because in it I am not the President. I am just Laura and you love me anyway. But in reality, before I decide which way the blood runs, I will need to be sure of that. 

Your hands flutter across my collar bone and down my sides. They too are reverent. You are assuring me that this is not about sex. But then, I knew that really. With everything that is between us this was never going to be just a quick frak in the sand. Through the magic of fantasy my wrap is pushed aside, the troublesome top and bra are already half way down my torso. You are still fully clothed and you make no attempt to rectify the situation. Instead you cup my breasts. You stop short, almost afraid at the memory. You seem amazed that something so enticing once seemed like it would be the destruction of us all. Yes, I know that this is an odd thing to appear in a fantasy. You would think that I would want to pretend it had never happened. You would think that at the very least I would want to wash over it. I don't because, even here, I need to believe that you forgive me. I need to believe that you have forgiven me for being sick and not paying attention, for not seeking treatment sooner. I need you to believe me. i need you to understand that had I known then that I would become the president of the twelve colonies at the end of the worlds, I would not have been so careless with my life. More than that I need to believe that you have forgiven me for not telling you sooner. I need you to understand why I didn't. I didn't tell you because even then, your smile meant the colonies to me and I couldn't bear to see it marred by your concerned acceptance or worse by your sorrow and resigned sympathy. I have always wanted you to see me as me. Not as your president, and certainly not as a disease.

So in my fantasy you confirm your forgiveness by brushing my nipples to hard points with your thumbs. I gasp and grind myself into you and you push up to meet me with your knee, pressing against my clit, as you return to my mouth. You are granting me the salvation of your forgiveness. It is bitter and sweet. I know that I do not deserve this absolution from my sins and yet I gratefully and wholeheartedly accept your offering. I plunder your mouth. I am clinging to you, gyrating against your knee, while all the while I am desperately attempting to hitch up my skirt and slide my legs around your waist. "Laura…Stop." You hold my head tightly in your hands. You are willing me to meet you eyes. Willing me to come back to you. "It's ok. It's done now. You don't have to worry anymore. What matters now is that you're here. You beat it. You're alive. It's not coming back. Shh..it's not coming back."

You say it with such certainty in your voice that I believe you. I take your hands in mine and kiss them with the same reverence that you have shown my body. You are still searching my eyes for understanding. Tears are meandering rivers on my face and you know that if I were to speak now it might break us both. These things that remain unsaid between us are most clearly spoken when we are silent. I nod and stroke your face, wiping away the ghosts of tears that have not yet fallen. Silently, I am telling you that you make me believe that I'll still be here this time next year.

Then your mouth is on my breasts and you hands are taking inventory of my legs as they slide up towards my centre, thumbs brushing gently. They are a whisper- barely there- against the soaked cotton. I hiss my approval. In reality no matter how turned on I am I never get this wet. But I am for you. "Bill…yesss…please.." My underwear is gone I know not where and I am gone with it as first you slide one, then two and finally three hard fingers inside me. Your rhythm is slow and determined. My skirt is shoved up to pool around my stomach. You sit back on your knees in front of me. I brace my feet in the sand and I am wide open before you. Apart from the slow flex of your fingers you are utterly still. You just sit there watching me as I come apart underneath your hands. I am full. Stretched wide. And I am begging for you to finish this as you pull out of me, curling that last finger around the others, before pushing into me again. "ahh..ungh..uh." I can come up with nothing better than that as I move against you. It isn't enough. Your fingers curl higher inside me, hooking underneath and pressing down hard against the spongy surface covering my pelvic bone. A gush of wetness floods your hand. I can see the mixed expression of concentrated awe on your face. I can hear and feel the unstopping wet rhythm of your hand, and I am crying out all the dirty pretty words I never dare to speak.I know that if this were real I'd be finding sand in unmentionable places for weeks afterwards. But this isn't real and the sand stays where it should as you lean over me for a brief kiss, before nibbling on my ear, demanding, "Come for me." The set of New Caprica cracks and shatters into a million little pieces as your tongue lands on my clit, pressing into me in tiny hard circles…

And then I am back on Colonial One, unable to cry out the way I would like to. Privacy here is non-existent. Hidden guiltily under the covers I take my pleasure. My fingers frantically pound into my pussy, while my other hand manically alternates between rubbing tight circles around my clit and squeezing my nipples. I need another set of hands. Preferably yours, Bill. I'm close now, so close, Bill. Because of you. When I'm here like this, right on the edge of coming. I imagine you. Always you. Sliding your cock into me, as we lay in a tussled mess in the New Caprican sand and I come with your name laying delicately, like so many things about us, unspoken, on my lips. 

Do I think of that day often Bill? Only every day. The memory of it flips my stomach. I cross my arms over my chest and hope that you aren't looking too closely at me right now.  
  
 _"It was Baltar's ground breaking ceremony. I got a little silly that night."_

You nod as if you are already resigned to the facts of the things you think you know. You were expecting me to use humour to push you gently away. But you aren't ready to let this go. You made that decision before you ever walked through the door. It's as if you have had a confrontation with yourself over this. Like me you have berated yourself for being a lovesick idiot. That niggling voice in the back of your mind told you that you were afraid; afraid of this becoming something that you could not control. It also told you that you were making excuses. Now you are determined to show yourself that you are not a coward. However the blood ends up running you are going to see this thing through. And because you have waited and wondered for long enough, you are going to ask the question because now you need to know for sure:  
  
 _"You ever wonder what would' a' happened if the Cylons hadn't'o come back?"_

I know what it is you're asking me, but I need to know why before I make a fool of myself by telling you how badly I wanted to build that cabin, before i tell you how hard I would have worked to make a tiny part of New Caprica somewhere that you would have wanted to come home to. So I pretend not to know where you are going with this. I give a generalised answer and ask a difficult question and before either has left my mouth I know that it's unfair:  
  
 _"Well, I think given Baltar and the terrain we couldn't have made a go of it. What about you? Do you think you would have stayed on Galactica or do you think you would have settled?"_

I know the answer already. You would have stayed on Galactica. But you don't know how much I wanted you to stay on New Caprica and how awful it was for me every time you left. You will never know how much I wanted you to want me and a home and a life more than you wanted to command an empty Battlestar. You will never know how close I came to asking you to stay.  
  
 _"It's pretty hypothetical isn't it?"_

Here is the avoidance I've been expecting. You think the truth will hurt me. The truth is that we will always have to choose duty, obligation and responsibility over each other. What you don't know is that asking you to choose is not something I would ever have done. No matter how much I might have wanted to. Yes, I would have built the cabin. Yes I would have built it with the possibility of us in mind. But I couldn't ask you to stay. Your place will always be on Galactica. You will serve and protect this fleet until the day you die. It is noble. I love you for it. But what I want to know is if you thought twice about it? Emotionally, as a person, not as the Admiral, would you have wanted to stay?

I know you're right. It is all hypothetical now. But this conversation is about more than a hypothetical cabin in some hypothetical woods. What we are really talking about here is us, and how this is going to work and how much we can give and expect from each other given who we are. Given the sum total of our responsibilities and obligations this is a minefield from which I doubt either of us will emerge unscathed. So I need to know if it's worth the blood.  
  
 _"It is. Until it isn't."_

It sounds ridiculous once I say it aloud. And I can barely stop laughing long enough to ask:  
  
 _"Did I just say that?"_

I look at you and in that moment I know that I can live without certainty. We can accept the quiet pleasures and intensities of each other's company as and when we have the time. Because that's the way it has to be. It's not our hypothetical cabin but I think that the reality of us will be better than the cold unreality of the most vivid fantasy of New Caprica that I can dream up. Your words shock me with how much they mirror my own thoughts  
  
 _"It's worth just seeing you laugh like that. We've been at war for so long sometimes we forget what we're fighting for; raise our kids in peace. Enjoy one another's company. Live life as people again."_

Yes, Bill that's exactly it. We survived the end of the worlds but in the process we forgot how to live. Then we rediscovered life again in the quiet stolen moments we have shared together. Like that night on New Caprica…   
  
_"Like that night on New Caprica. That's really what we're talking about here now isn't it?"_  
  
"That and…other times." 

Yes and other times. Like the quiet meals we share together, and the dangerous flirtations over drinks in your quarters, and the time I fell asleep in your bunk as you held my hand. A reassuring grasp turning to a caress as we discussed Baltar's trial. I remember you removing my glasses. A soft kiss to my cheek. Fingers through my hair and then nothing until I woke to the Galactica's simulated morning light. You had called Tory. Tucked me in and let me sleep. There was coffee on the table. You smiled pulling out a chair for me. You had arranged breakfast. It was perfect.

If the conversation had been easy between us that morning it was difficult now. There is too much and nothing between us and we are both about to boil over with the things we have left unsaid for so long. I need to hear you say it  
  
 _"So if the Cylons… hadn't come back?"_

Don't look at me like that. Yes I'm pushing you now. I want to hear you say that which before now only the books we have shared have dared to whisper   
  
_I love you. I want to be with you. Whatever time we have, I want you to share it with me._  
  
"But they did." 

Yes they did. And it seems that the unimaginable is true; you are a coward after all. You stand and I am sure you are about to leave. Then you move towards me. I turn my head to follow you and I am just as sure that you will kiss me again, after all this time. A thrill of excitement washes through me. This time I'm not half asleep. I am not sick, or weak. This time I'm not dying. This time you're in trouble because I'm going to kiss you back.  
  
 _"We have certain responsibilities."_

I sigh internally. You are still not quiet ready to believe that I know exactly what we've been sitting here talking about all this time. I know. I understand that it is safer for you to believe that. That way you can salve your conscience by telling yourself that you have told me how you feel. Because you still think I'm going to reject you and keeping it this way - half hypothetical and unspoken - Well, you hope it will hurt less. You intend on writing this off as another one of our odd conversations - one of the little diversions we indulge in to break up the day. You are going to convince yourself that you simply read too much into my responses. It was nothing really- you will convince yourself of that much I'm sure. And then we can go on as before. They way we always have.

Well I'm sorry Bill, but not this time. Neither of us is getting out of this. It has gone too far this time and not even you throwing our responsibilities in my face is going to stop me. I am almost dancing in your personal space because of my decision.  
  
 _"Yes we do sir and ah…I will be back in a few days and if you would like we can talk more about…that night."_

So Bill, now you know I know and you can't take it back. I turn to leave. Wiggling my hips as I go. Suddenly I realise that you aren't watching me. You are still so consumed with doubt that you missed the show. Why do you still doubt me? This time I leave no room for interpretation.  
  
 _"Bill? The answer's yes. I absolutely would have built the cabin."_

My hand is on the door and I really do intend on leaving this time. But my name stops me in my tracks.  
  
 _"Laura?"_

I turn and smile.   
  
_"What?"_  
  
"Had you built that cabin, I would' a wanted to stay." 

It is the most honest thing you have said all evening, and now I'm done with this little game of hide and seek. I drop my bag to the floor and rush at you. I find myself crushed to your body. Your hands rest gently in my hair. My lips are pressed against yours. Your kisses are slow and deliberate, tentative and fluttering little touches. This is nothing like my fantasy of us and that night on New Caprica. This is better. This is real. Then, with regret this small moment spent together is at an end. My head is resting against your brow, my eyes still closed as I whisper;  
  
 _"I'll see you in a few days."_

I turn and pick up my hurriedly forgotten bag. I chance one last look at you over my shoulder. You are real. You are still there smiling through the burning blue intensity of your eyes as you repeat my words. Reassuring us:  
  
 _"Yeah…in a few days."_

This time when you look at me, I'm not afraid.


	2. And Other Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is what happens when you obsessively watch Bill’s scene the one that comes directly after that scene in A Day in the Life.
> 
> Bill’s POV

It's a strange thing for me, you know…this persistence of reality on the one day a year that I devote to the memory of long held fantasies. Even now- with everything that has passed so fleetingly through the air like so much dust. Glinting - only a fraction of the things they once were- in the hazy morning light, even now I still try and remember her the way I always wanted her to be. You see it was always the idea of her; something like a life. Something like the promise of love. Something soft and easy to fall into after the hard business of running a Battlestar was done. We all did it then. We all still do. Saul did it. Lee's down the hall doing it right now: Playing house with Dee, just like I played house with his mother for so many years. Difference is - he made a mistake, she's an officer of the fleet too. She knows the game and sooner or later, if she hasn't already, she'll call him on it. I just hope they both come out of it whole 'cause we sure as Tartarus didn't.

Saul had Ellen and I had Carolanne and we both loved the idea of them more than the reality. You've probably heard all the jokes 'bout fleet wives before but there's a reason the call em' Penelopes'. It's true what they say; 'While Odysseus is away the wife will play.'  
I grin a little at that. I can hear you. In my mind. You are irritated. Slowly building to irate as you inform me of what a crude interpretation of the Homeric mythic cycle that is.  
  
 _"That's awful Bill. Penelope did what she had to do to survive. What option did she have but to entertain suitors, however half-heartedly, by the end?"_

I am grazing the cover of your book lightly with my fingertips before I put it down. Grimacing a little 'cause there's no doubt where the blood is running to tonight. I nod. Why am I nodding? This thing between us is just plain weird most of the time. How can I be talking to you and not? Why do you always play a role in constructing the half-formed notions and errant thoughts running through my mind? I figure it's because I like it this way. I see no reason to change something that works, something that helps, so late in the game. My conscious mind placated I can now return to thoughts of you.

Had you known her you would never have defended her like you just did in my head. You would have thought about her exactly the same way you thought about Ellen Tigh during that celebratory dinner in my quarters: Interest turning to amusement then to incredulity and distaste - before settling on wondering just how much trouble she was actually capable of causing.

I never had any proof of my wife's infidelity but what I did have were suspicions. And while I concede that Odysseus himself was hardly a model husband, I never indulged in the pleasure of a Ceres or a Calypso warming my bunk at night. In the darkness. In the bright void of space it way always her and the boys I thought about. I'm not so sure that she could have said the same thing about me. 

I wish you were here right now Laura. I could use…what exactly? A shoulder to cry on…hardly. No. Someone to talk things through with?… maybe, but I If wanted that I'd just go get drunk with Saul. No. Truth is, I just want you here Laura. With me.We don't get nearly enough of those quiet moments we were talking about earlier, its only been…. Wow not even an hour since you left and already I miss the faint smell of mint in your hair and want to feel rather than remember your lips on mine. I want you here, 'cause I think you could make me forget those words. Lee's words that keep haunting me:  
  
 _"She was still your mother Lee, I loved her."_ The idea of her anyway.  
  
 _" I believe you. I just don't think she ever loved you."_

That's a hard thing to hear. Even when you've known, all this time, even when in moments of desperate self-loathing you've often told yourself the same thing. To hear it from your son, the abandoned child that suffered for your sins. - Telemachus - born on the day his father was summoned away to war. Telemachus - who saw it all and despised his mother for it. That's…that's tough.  
I never knew she hit them Laura. If I ever have the stones to tell you all this, I hope you believe that 'cause right now I'm doubting myself. _"It's not your fault. You weren't responsible for her actions."_ In my mind your voice is soft but firm with the forced conviction of your thoughts. Like when you banned abortion. You knew it was wrong but you said the words and did it anyway. I was just playing devil's advocate. What you said then was wrong. Just like what you're saying now is wrong. But I find myself wanting to believe you. Like then I wanted to believe that we could win. If we twist and manipulate the truth a little along the way in order to keep sane who will blame us for that?

Everyone, probably. And that's the danger in all this. They will blame us. History will say we were soft. If we are lucky they will romanticise us as fated lovers, but the decisions we made will always be tainted with the possibility that we made them not because of what was best for humanity but because of what was best for us. We can't lie to each other anymore Laura. Now even the little white ones that we tell each other to make things better are dangerous.

In my mind you are sitting on my couch with you legs crossed, shoes and suit jacket long since discarded. You sit skewed in the seat, one arm draped over the back of the chair. You take off your glasses folding them loosely into you hand. Your gaze follows me around the room as I move to pour a drink. For a long time you are silent.  
  
 _"What would you have me say instead?"_  
  
Your gestures are wild again. Now you are angry.  
  
 _"Should I tell you that I think that the fact that you weren't there to stop it, that you didn't go back even though you suspected, even though you knew she was unstable, is appalling? Should I tell you that it was your fault? Would that change anything? Would that make it better? Would you like me to hate you for it? Would it be easier for you that way? You can think that if you like. But that would be a lie too. And it won't make it easier"_

_"No."_ I'm not sure exactly which part of it I'm saying no to…'cept maybe all of it. I have used you to bring all my usual excuses out in the open, now they're all just floating there in the forefront of my mind. I've been doing that a lot lately. Making excuses. Excuses for the things I can't quite believe are happening, excuses for the things I wish had happened and excuses for the things I wish never had. Truth is, they're all just so much hot air. 'til that is you follow through with them. Make things right. 

You are waiting for a proper response. The fingers of you hand are worrying your glasses, and your bare foot taps out a staccato rhythm on the carpet. Your eyes are daring me to say the wrong thing. You wait until I turn to face you. You are searching my face for something…that way you always do. I'm gonna ask you what that's about next time I see you. You sigh, "Are we going to talk about this?" There she is again. The school teacher. And right now I don't want to talk to her I just wanna frak her. I gulp down the rest of my drink and slam the glass down so hard on the table I'm surprised it doesn't shatter. _"No"._ Then I'm on you, pushing you down against the couch. Plundering your mouth. It is hot and angry and full of the things I won't say. I'm holding the tops of your arms so tightly that I'd be leaving bruises on you if you were real. 

You stare at me defiantly, as you reach down between us slowly divesting yourself of your shirt and hitch your tight skirt up to your waist. You never take your eyes from mine as you lay a hand on my chest edging me onto the deck in front of you and spread your legs wide. You're wearing nothing underneath. In my fantasies you are unbelievably wet. Your cunt glistens with it in the low light of my quarters. And I am on you instantly. Pants down around my ankles, your legs wrapped tightly around my waist. I am thrusting into you and you are growling your approval and demanding, demanding: "Frak me hard…yesss! …harder..harder..Frak me." While you twist your own nipple with one hand and rub your clit franticly with the other. I can't stop watching your hands as you buck into me, bringing yourself off as I come, collapsing on top of you with nothing but lust and anger on my lips and in my heart. It is animalistic. It is feral and unkind. I am immediately sorry. Disgusted with myself at my fantasy of you. I remind myself: _It won't be like this_ and for that knowledge I am glad. I never want to loose control like this. I don't ever want to touch you this way. You are too sacred, too precious to be used like this. My head is resting against yours. It is comforting. Desperate and reassuring. Just like it was earlier this evening. I stroke your arms where I would have marked them.  
  
 _"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to fix this. Lee's gonna take time but we've made a good start. Now I'm gonna make it right with Carolanne. Then I'm gonna make it right with you."_

You move away from me. You're smiling. That confused one you use sometimes even when you're not. "This doesn't have anything to do with me. I don't even know why I'm here." I nod. And try again. We've been here before. Looking you in the eye I tell you:  
  
 _"You're wrong. This has everything to do with you."_  
  
Even as you fade away, disappearing from my minds eye, you still look like you don't understand. That's ok. I think your corporeal self will. I close my eyes for just a second as I take the picture of Carolanne and me, on our wedding day, into my hands. I think about smashing it to pieces. I think it would feel good. Instead I just stare at it vacantly. At this point, I know there's not much I can do to make this hurt less.  
  
 _"Go Ahead. Put it Away like you have after every anniversary. Promise me you won't take it out again."_  
  
She's here now. Just like you were a minute ago. But this is different. I don't want her here, in this space I've come to think of as ours. So in my mind I move our conversation to the house on Caprica. It is easier here, in the places you have never touched with your presence. I imagined her earlier asking me why I do it. Why I persist in keeping her alive in fantasy, in memory, when reality of my, that is to say our, current situation is so much more appealing. It's not because I miss her. That stopped a long time ago. She thinks that maybe I'm trying to protect myself:  
  
 _"That's it. That's why you keep calling me back. Because if you had made that mistake. It would just call into question all of your other decisions."_

And maybe I am, but not in the way she thinks. I used to bring her back 'cause I couldn't face the fact that she was gone. But these last few years I've kept bringing her back so I'd stay away from you. ' Cause if I'd managed to fall in love with a woman as deeply flawed as Carolanne, there was the chance I was doing the same with you. If I could ignore all her sins and love her anyway, if I had recognised that I was capable of that kind of blindness, I would have had to acknowledge sooner my greatest fear of all; that my love for you is blinding. This thing between us blinds me and I am afraid that I won't be able to recognise our flaws, our sins, our mistakes, anymore. Only this time, between us, the risk of it is deadly. This is not just our own self-destruction. It could be humanity's. I am afraid that I wouldn't care. I am afraid because you are President and I am the Admiral of the fleet and the conversation we half had this afternoon - well, that's a dangerous game to be playing with this kind of power.

I can hear her again. I am trying to push her away. I am trying to say goodbye. To give us both absolution for our sins. But she's not done meddling yet. She won't let it go. She just keeps repeating her earlier observations. This time she is vicious. Cold anger boiling underneath:   
  
_"Why are you still here? You need to be talking to her. Not me. I'm nothing to you now. We're finished. Done. Remember? You're so broken. Twisted up inside. You don't deserve her. But then… you like to put her on a pedestal. She's not perfect either. She's broken. Used up. Just like you. She might even be dying again and she won't tell you. Just like she didn't before. But then, there's still time. It doesn't have to be complicated. Maybe she's got a thing for bad boys. She wouldn't be the first. An affair. A few quick hard fraks up against a bulkhead even- you have time for that. It's all you need. All you really want. It would be exciting. And I bet she'd get She'd get off on it - get off on the power she'd have over the most powerful man in the fleet. I know I would."_

I grab her neck then, squeezing tighter harder, till my knuckles are white. I'd like to kill her for talking 'bout you like that. But knowing the futility of snapping a long dead woman's neck, I release her.  
  
 _"Don't you EVER, talk about Laura like that."  
  
"Laura now is it? So you've broken that pedestal you've had her on all this time. Tell me… do you want her as much as you did when you still insisted on calling her Madam President all the time? Do you still want to frak her now you're not keeping your distance anymore?"  
  
"You're getting repetitive. You know that?" I say before taking another large gulp of liquor  
  
"Blame yourself. I'm a figment of your imagination. You were right earlier. This has everything to do with her. That's why you're here remembering this again. You're afraid of her just like you used to be afraid of me, afraid of how she makes you feel. And for all your sweet words to her earlier, for all your protests to her that you would have wanted to stay with her on New Caprica, You know you never would have. Not really. Because you're a coward. You can't tell her how you feel, your afraid of the things she'll say."_  
  
I pour another drink and knock it back. _"Keep watching Carolanne, you're in for a surprise."  
  
"Really? I'm glad to hear it. Go on. Prove me wrong. Just to spite me."  
  
"It would be easier to hate you." _ I sigh _"But that would be a lie Carolanne. And there's been enough of that through our lives."_

That's half the problem here. We all want to hate each other. But we can't quite make ourselves feel it enough to make it real. Laura wants to hate me for leaving them all on New Caprica, but mostly for leaving her. If she knew what I did to Lee, what I did to both my boys, if she knew, she'd hate me for that too. And I want to hate her for nearly dying and not telling me about it for so long. I want to hate her for by some miracle surviving to be stronger, harder. I want to hate her because it has made her cold. I want to hate her for the way that she's always under my skin, in my thoughts and in my head, even when I don't want here there. And I want to hate you for what you did. But you see I can't - because I did love you once - and at the beginning anyway- I believed that you loved me- and I thought- just like I'm thinking now, that I could fix the rest. I wasn't afraid then. But now I know from experience. You can't fix something that's so badly broken in so many places. You can't fix something when all you have are half the pieces.   
  
_"We did have something didn't we?"_  
  
"We had something" 

I'm just still not sure what it was, or if it was worth the pain we caused each other. The pain we caused our children. And when I kiss you I'm kissing this goodbye. I'm finally letting it all go after all these years. I am forgiving you. I am almost forgiving myself. This is right. Silently I put the picture of us away in the draw. I take the ring from my finger. Now there is only the ghost of a ring, a white waxy band of skin to mark the place where our love lived broken for so many years. It is enough now. Enough. I place the ring on top of the picture and shut the draw. Maybe one day if he can find it in himself to forgive you, Lee might like to have them. I take another drink. I'm drinking myself sober now, with hesitating. Now comes the hardest part of all this. The part that matters. The part that makes this real. It doesn't take place in the realm of a half forgotten, distant and murky past. This part determines our future, Laura. I pick up the phone.   
  
_"Get me the president."_

I am left waiting, holding the line for a long time, and I wonder if you are sleeping. It would be appropriate. Every time I've wanted to tell you before I've turned to you and found you sleeping. Like that night on New Caprica, and other times.When you eventually come on the line your voice is tired. Heavy with sleep. I have never heard anything more beautiful.   
  
_"Bill? What's wrong? What's happening? Why did no one wake me?"_

I am reminded of other times like this. Other times when I have woken you from sleeping. I've noticed how you always panic some. 'til you realise where you are, like you were afraid to go to sleep in the first place, like you believe that something awful will happen and you won't be there to stop it. You still fear that all to soon you won't be here to catch us. I still worry you might be right. Oftentimes you seem embarrassed, ashamed that you needed to sleep at all.

Then you realise that it's just me watching. Only me, who's here to witness this small weakness of yours. And I think, I hope, that's not such an unpleasant thing for you to deal with as you relax back into my arms, your head resting on my chest, your breathing becoming even and steady once again. In a way, this moment is like that night on New Caprica. That night I wanted to tell you so many things: like how I wanted to enjoy the moment, like how very much I wanted to stay, like how in those silent moments between us I couldn't give a frak about Galactica, like how I was done fighting the ghosts of long absent Cylons, and now I wanted to stay and fight for us. Like how I'd thought about building a cabin too. Something that belonged just to us and no one else. Most of all I wanted to tell you I was sorry. Sorry I'd been afraid. Afraid of us. Of you. Of this, and everything it meant.

I started to tell you that night. Started with the loving whisper of your name _"Laura...."_ then I noticed your hand limp against my chest.Your stillness. You'd fallen asleep. So peaceful, I couldn't bare to wake you. Just like I wish I hadn't woken you now. This is too hard and I'd rather the memory of watching you sleep. By the morning my arm had gone dead. You jumped awake. Fighting against my chest. Inbetween embarrassed smile you kissed me. It was nothing like I imagined and everything I wanted in that moment. - A way out - tentative. Unsure. Already insisting its existence had been a mistake. An aberration in the blue canvass half-light of early morning. Like a gentleman I took your hand, pulling you off the sandbags. You stood straightening your clothes, best as you could manage. You took my arm and we walked back into camp. But it was already too late, Laura. You see, in my mind, our actions our movements, the care we took with each other that morning, made us lovers in all but deed. God's Laura, its like we just keep forgetting to do the fun part.

There were other times. Other times I tried to tell you, to say the words that would make things right between us. Like that time you stayed the night in my bunk. I remember the touch of your hand always reassuring against my arm, turning to a caress, as we discussed what to do with Baltar. You were exhausted that night. Exhausted by the mental energy, the courage it had taken you to fight your baser instincts. To fight your emotions - to cover the betrayal and fear and hurt. To do what was right. You were exhausted by the courage it had taken you not to just hurl him out the airlock and be done with it. I offered to do it for you. I would have done anything in that moment. Anything to take it all away. You told me No. No. That we would do this right. You made yourself believe. You said it like you'd never struggled with the decision at all. And in doing so you made me believe too. And yet, that touch on my arm said different. Said you couldn't quite believe it yourself, said I need you, said I'm afraid of what this will mean for us, said this has the power to destroy everything. Said I'm afraid I can't live through a third apocalypse.

I wanted to tell you then. Tell you I was afraid too. Afraid for us. But I've never been good with words and I didn't have the false courage that being stoned and drunk had given me on New Caprica. So I just squeezed your hand tightly. Slipped the glasses off you nose and placed them on the nightstand. You relaxed into sleep as I brushed the hair from your forehead, and placed my lips against it. Hoping you wouldn't hold me to it… this the barest whisper of a kiss. 

I slept on the couch. I could hear you. You slept fitfully. In the morning you woke disorientated, embarrassed and fighting against the covers. I ordered breakfast for two. There was coffee and talking, inconsequential banter and dangerous flirting and I remember thinking: Every morning should be like this. But I never told you that either ' cause Carolanne was right about one thing, I am a coward. And your habit of falling asleep at inopportune moments is just another way out, another excuse, another easy save. Truth is, this might be like New Caprica and that time in my bunk but this time it's all turned backwards. This time I woke you up and I still don't know what I'm going to say to make it right.  
  
 _"Bill…Bill? Are you there?"  
  
"I'm… sorry. I woke you… everything's fine. You should go back to sleep."_  
  
Go back to sleep because its safer that way. That way I can pretend that I was going to tell you everything, but it wasn't the right time.  
  
 _"No…I' awake now. What's wrong?"  
  
"Nothing… you should…"  
  
"Bill?"  
  
"Yeah" _I'm defeated. You're gonna break me now and I know it.  
  
 _"Stop stalling."  
  
"Yeah right…sorry…I…uh… I guess all I wanted to say was hi. I guess… I missed the sound of your voice is all."_  
  
It's the truth, and it almost says what I want to say. Half of it anyway. I can hear you shifting around. I imagine you rearranging the pillows sitting up in your bunk. I hear a clatter that sounds suspiciously like you just dropped your glasses.  
  
 _"…ughhh..ah.."_  
  
That sound makes me forget everything but my earlier fantasies of frakking you. I'm instantly hard and I can't help but re-adjust the suddenly too tight pants of my uniform. I clear my throat:  
  
 _"Laura…what are you doing?"  
  
"I …uh…oh… I ah…dropped my glasses under the bed…I'm trying to reach them without getting up…. that's it…nearly…yeah…got them!" _  
  
Your voice is breathy with exertion, and I make a mental note to stay away from the gym while you're there, unless I want to embarrass myself. I try again _"Laura…"  
  
"Bill…it's not that I'm not terribly flattered. But I only left what? Two hours ago…and if it's this bad already before we've really…well done anything. Then we're in trouble."  
  
"I love the sound of your voice. It makes me think…"  
  
"Bill…I'm not about to have phone sex with you. Someone's going to hear us."  
  
"Now that's a damned shame Madam President, but I was going to say… I love your voice. It makes me think I could tell you anything and you'd understand."  
  
Giggles now. I'm trying to bare my soul to you and what am I getting? Giggles.  
  
"Bill!..Oh.. I'm so sorry…that's so sweet. Beautiful really…and I thought you were…"  
  
More giggles! This woman!  
  
"Laura, please this is important. I need to tell you something."_  
  
The mood has changed. Everything seems terribly still in the sudden silence. Then you speak your voice tinged with concern and more than a little fear.  
  
 _"Bill? What's wrong? What are you trying to tell me? What do you mean? What is it your trying to say?"_  
  
I can't. After all this I can't do it. I can't.  
  
 _"Listen. I shouldn't have called this was a bad idea. I don't want to do this over the phone."  
  
"Bill…don't. Don't do this."_  
  
There are tears in your voice now. Tears that I'm causing and I can bear that even less than I can bear my own fear.  
  
 _"Laura no…that's not what I meant."  
  
" Then what do you mean?!"_  
  
And there's the anger. You think I'm trying to finish this before it starts. You think I'm trying to find a way out of this. Just like I did on New Caprica. Just like this afternoon when I said we had responsibilities.  
  
 _"I…I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry."  
  
"You're sorry?"  
  
"This…this isn't coming out right."  
  
"You're damned right it isn't."  
  
" I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry…I'm sorry for being afraid."  
  
"Afraid?" _  
  
Your voice is laced more with incredulity than anger now. You don't understand what I'm trying to say, and I can't make the words come out in anything more than a muddled rush. I hope you can pick out the important parts.  
  
 _"Yeah…I tried before. To tell you but I couldn't. I wanted you to know before that it wasn't because of you. It was me. I was just afraid. I was afraid that I'd frak this up, just like my marriage. I was afraid that it wasn't enough to love you. Not when all the other pieces were wrong. Not if it could hurt us. Not if it was gonna hurt the fleet. Then I realised. I realised tonight that they're just excuses not to try. And it might be a disaster waiting to happen but that doesn't change the way I feel. Anyway.. I've been trying to tell you all this... So many times I've almost….but then I'd find an excuse not to, some way to obfuscate the truth..."  
  
"Like that night on New Caprica?…We almost, and then in the morning… Why didn't you say anything?  
  
"You fell asleep. And then in the morning I wasn't stoned anymore."  
  
"I fell asleep. Like that time in your bunk.."  
  
"Yeah…then too. I'm beginning to be concerned about your narcoleptic tendencies, Madam President."  
  
"I'm sorry." _You are sniffing now, half laughing through your tears.  
  
 _"so'kay. I didn't mind so much. You're beautiful when you sleep."  
  
"You don't need to say things like that you know?"  
  
"Yes I do. It's finally the truth."  
  
"That doesn't matter now."  
  
"Yes it does. It matters now more than anything. We can't go into this lying to each other Laura, not even the little ones."  
  
"I guess we have a lot to talk about."  
  
"Yes we do Madam President."  
  
"Bill?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Stop calling me Madam President. It's just Laura. I want to be just Laura. I want it to be just us."  
  
"Okay. Laura…"_  
  
There's the shifting again. I start to worry that you're going to fall asleep on me again.  
  
 _"Laura.."  
  
"Hmmm…"  
  
"Are you falling asleep on me again? When are you going to be back on Galactica?  
  
"No. I was just trying to get comfortable. I'll be aboard all day, the day after tomorrow. I've asked Tory to arrange a dinner meeting for me with the admiral. First thing the next morning I have an appointment with Doc Cottle, so I was hoping the admiral might be able to put me up for the night."  
  
" I hear he's very accommodating. I'm sure he can find room for you in one of his beds."_  
  
Well that lasted a long time. We managed to keep our personal and professional lives separate for all of five seconds. Truth is, we are who we are. I am the Admiral and you are the President. That's not gonna change any time soon. We'll have to learn to work with it.  
  
 _"Madam President?"  
  
"Yes Admiral?"  
  
"What are you wearing?"  
  
"Goodnight Bill, I'll see you in a few days." _  
  
Its good to hear you laugh. And I am grinning like an idiot.  
  
 _"Night Laura."_  
  
It's gonna be a long few days.


	3. In a Few Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After all this time, after everything that could be said had been said, it came down to a single moment. It was frightening. Terrifying and awesome. Just like it should be. Just like they'd both imagined. After everything, it couldn't be any other way. It was time to find out which way the blood would run.
> 
>  
> 
> Laura and Bill mixed POV. Takes place the evening before the events of "Dirty Hands".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laura and Bill mixed POV. Takes place the evening before the events of "Dirty Hands".
> 
> This part is nothing but angst, smut and angst with a little fluff thrown in at the end for good measure. Be warned that the second half its about as graphic and MA as it can get without me drawing you pictures.

The day had been impossible. Looking at her all day. Wanting her. Wishing for just a moment of privacy. A moment of silence in the deafeningly loud haze of their respective days, in which to whisper, to tell her how glad he was that she was here, how right it felt for her to be working beside him, here by his side always. How desperate he had been to ask for a moment in private, how tempted he had been to take her arm and guide her behind the glass wall of damage control, and into the small haven of relative privacy it offered, just to tell her how much he was looking forward to this evening. But instead he had settled for leaning into her as they talked, and placing his hand on the small of her back more than once. She had jumped at that. She had flinched at his touch as surely as if she had been burned by this kind of attention before, she had seemed to recoil not so much at the touch itself, but at the memory of it. The memory of what it meant: shifting on her feet, fidgeting every time he came near her. Like she was desperate to get away. She was uncomfortable with the attention. Uncomfortable with the public display of affection, however small, however much it went unnoticed. She was right of course. She had done everything right. Her demeanour had been nothing if not consummately professional. Today, as far as she was concerned, there was only the business of running the fleet between them. It was right. It was professional.

_And all I've done all day is touch her inappropriately and grin at her like an idiot. You're a fool Adama, and now she's late. Maybe she's not coming at all. You deserve as much. But what the hell had she been doing in the CIC most of the day anyway? Didn't she have meetings to go to? People to see apart from me._

Bill took off his jacket and flopped down on the couch, _Blood Runs at Midnight,_ in his hands. A wide grin spread across his face at the possibility that Laura hadn't been being as professional today as the preliminary analysis may have indicated. Then again, he thought, _it's entirely possible that this book is going to my head._. He had to admit. She had been right. It was a good mystery, but what had him intrigued was not the fairly run of the mill, who done it, story line but the relationship between its two investigators. As he found where he had left off last night, he wondered, not for the first time, what exactly Laura had been trying to tell him by giving him this novel.

_***_

" ....as you can see Madam President, if you would care to turn to page 112, conversion efficiency of the algae processing plant is down 29.93% from the last quarter. If it would please the President I would now like to go over my recommendations for improvement in the next quarter. As you are no doubt aware Madam President, working conditions on the...."

Laura Roslin's head was pounding. _No it doesn't please me._ She thought sullenly. _The only thing that would please me right now would be the Admiral's bed. Which is just where I should have been, what? An hour? An hour and a half ago?_ She thought as she searched the display screens in the ready room wondering, what exactly the aversion to clocks on Galactica was about.  
  
"....finally, I would like to suggest the introduction of proper shift rotation patterns which would allow for whole 8 hour off duty cycles..."

_Chance would be a fine thing. I might be able to shift the headache I've had for two days straight if I'd had more than three hours sleep in the last 36._ Her thoughts were not fair. She knew that. She knew that something had to be done about the appalling conditions aboard all of the auxiliary processing ships in the fleet. They all deserved more than this. More than simple survival. More than existence. They deserved life. It pained her to know they suffered. It pained her more that it seemed that there was so little to be done about it. They were at war. They were running for their lives. Everything was different now. Even after all this time she could not quite believe the courage of her own convictions. The things she had done, the decisions she had made. She knew that her old self, the pain in the ass, liberal secretary of Education, would not recognise herself now. it makes her sad. It makes her afraid. Afraid of what she had become capable of. _Inter arma enim silent leges._ For among times of arms, the laws fall mute. Richard had been fond of quoting that old adage. Every situation had been a war of sorts for him. She had hated that about him. She could not believe it then, had not wanted to. And she hated herself for believing it now.

She had believed her cancer would be the end of her. It would have been quicker than this. Parts of herself falling away dying a little each day, rotting from the inside, leaving only a cold, hard, impenetrable shell. Leaving only the appearance of the things she once was. She would fight the Cylons and protect the fleet until the day she died, yet she could not help but feel she'd already lost the war within herself.

She thinks of Bill. That makes her smile. All was perhaps not lost. She thinks he could save her. Somehow she thinks she can save him, and she hopes that they will save each other. Either that or it will be their final undoing. She thinks it might be a little of both. It makes her afraid that she cannot make herself care. She must make herself believe. She knows she must make herself believe, for the sake of the fleet. Her convictions had been strong earlier. She had been afraid for them. She had flinched away from his touch. She wonders if he has started to read it yet. She wonders if he's gotten to the part that makes her cry. She wonders if he will understand why.

_***_

**It was not so much that he knew now that she loved him. For Agent May had always known that much. It was in his heart. In his blood, flowing through his veins. Through his body, broken and twisted as it was. It was not that he did not love her back. For he loved her more than all the words he knew could say. It was that he was afraid for her. He was afraid because he knew she would follow him anywhere. Yes she would question him. Yes she would argue with him. Knowing all the time that there was nothing she could say to make him stay, and so she would follow him. Like she always did. She would find him in the darkness, follow him through the gates of Hades itself because she always believed that she could save him from his demons. Save them from themselves. And she was usually right. But this time he could not do it. He could not take the risk of loosing her again. It was all too raw now. It was all too soon. And so because he was too afraid to tell her so, too much of a coward to lay down his reasoning in front of her, he rose from the bed. Their bed, a bed shared only once and all too briefly. He pulled on his clothes and holstered his gun, before placing a lingering kiss on her sleeping lips. He didn't look back as he shut the door quietly behind him and walked into the still Delphian night. If he had, he would have seen her awake, seen her watching him leave. Despairing and understanding. If he had looked back he would have seen a single tear escape, sliding mournfully over her perfect cheek. If he had seen any of it. It would have made him stay.**

**It was not yet time for them. It may have seemed otherwise to Agent D'nai, in that moment, but the Gods were not cruel. Later, she would find comfort in the knowledge, her hopeful faith, still shaky after all she had witnessed, that the fates did nothing without reason. She felt, with absolute certainty that there would be a time, soon, when neither of them would be able to deny any longer the things that were between them. The truth they both knew.**

  
  
It was both the joy of reading and a great shock to see your own thoughts reflected in the lines of books. Bill drew in a stilted breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. He grinned. Wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. It was true, they had communicated for a long time this way. Allowing the books they shared to convey everything they could not say to each other. But this one. This one hit close to the mark. It made him nervous to think that Laura might know his mind this well without him ever speaking to her about it. Then again, it was possible she was identifying with Agent May too. It was possible she was as afraid for him as he was for her, but then the descriptions of the two agents of the Caprican Police Force were so like them. Right down to the scar down May's chest and the fear he felt. Right down to D'nai's long red hair, and her shaken faith in the Gods. Right down to the unspoken love between them that they could only reveal to each other in the face of personal tragedy. It had been impossible not to cast himself and Laura in their respective roles.

Of course she picked this moment to come waltzing through the open hatch of his quarters. Later, in their shared bed, he would remember this moment and he would think that really, after all this time, it couldn't have happened any other way.  
  
"Hi."

He smiles tightly at her. His eyes are dangerous. They tell Laura he is tired of their game. Tired of running. Tired of playing at being lovers. Tired of not talking. Tired of the inarticulate or worse ambiguous lines of books that could never say fully what he wanted her to know. He was tired of guessing at what she was trying to tell him.  
  
"Its late. I didn't think you were coming. Not after today."  
  
She nods holding herself rigid as she takes a seat next to him on the sofa and removes her shoes. Their distance from each other, a gulf between them. She leans forward, and stares silently at her hands clasped in her lap, as if she's examining them, she feels as if they are not a part of her, but something entirely alien. When she finally speaks her words are measured, cold and angry. Bill is frightened by them. This was the tone she used with the quorum, then tone she used to scare the living shit out of Baltar  
  
"Now what could have happened today to make you think that?"  
  
He suddenly realises that this is the tone she uses when she is afraid. he makes a note to look out for it in the future. She was afraid too and he took a twisted kind of strength from the knowledge of it. This was them trying to fight it, fight each other and create another way out, another excuse. He would not let it go this time. He thinks he would do anything for her but that. He will not make it easier on her, this time. Not when the price is as high as his own heart, because if it is broken again, this time, he knows it will not mend.  
  
"In the CIC. You kept flinching away from me. Every time I came near you, you flinched like I was going to hurt you."  
  
"I'm sorry. I...Over-reacted. I'm not good at this."  
  
She is still careful about which words she uses. Careful in case the things she says will be used against her later. Even with Bill. Even though she doesn't believe he would do it, she still fears it. Fears her own destruction more than she fears this. But she knows she must try and tell him the truth, the truth about her past. Even if it is without names and the gory details. She only hopes he will let her get away with it. She hopes he will understand that she has her ghosts too, just like him. Only difference is he wears his ghosts in memoriam on his finger and she buries them deep inside herself where she hopes no one will ever find them. She has never asked him about it. That thin band of gold between them. She respects his past sorrows. She hopes he will respect hers.  
  
"No you're not. You suck at it."   
  
She is startled by his outburst. And even though he makes a joke of it, when she looks at his face. Looks in his eyes. She knows he is serious. Knows that she has hurt him. Again.  
  
"I'm not good at public displays of affection. I never have been. They're dangerous. Politically dangerous."

He grasps her hands then, her own alien hands. The hands she has been wringing and worrying all this time and did not know it. He places his large left hand over her own and squeezes tightly.  
  
"You need to stop this. I didn't touch you any differently today, to how I always touch you. Granted I thought about it, but I didn't."   
  
"It felt different. It was different. The intent was different. And it reminded me..." She turns so that he will see the fear in her eyes. She needs him to understand. "Reminded me of how dangerous this is. How dangerous it could get. If we don't control ourselves."

She moves her hand under his. Turning it into his grasp. Something is different. She doesn't feel it. She looks down at his hand resting on hers. It is gone. She turns back to face him. Her heart beats hard in her chest, because she knows somehow, that this changes everything. He has shed his ghosts. Now she will have to shed her own.  
  
"You took it off." He looks at her confused.  
  
"Your ring. It's gone." He can't help but smile at her shock.  
  
 _"_ Yeah, I've er.....been doing a lot of thinking these last few days. Since the things we said back in the conference room. I figured it was time."  
  
Tears sting her eyes. He has done this thing for her. Faced his past. Faced his demons. For her. And she has not been brave enough to return the favour.  
  
"Why now?"  
  
"Because it wouldn't be right. To make love to a woman, and to tell that woman how much you love her, when you've still got another woman's ring on your finger. Even if it wouldn't really be a betrayal. Even though I haven't felt anything like this for my ex-wife, in a very long, time. If I ever did. It needed to be finished. Needed to be made right. Before I could make things right with you."

She had been going to tell him everything. Tell him about Richard. About how stupid she had been to take those kinds of risks. About how frightened she had been everyday. Frightened that they would be found out. Frightened that the tabloids would report their nasty little fling, exactly as it was. About how stupid he'd been not to care. Not to consider it. About how sure she was now that she had never really loved him, although at the time she had made herself believe that she had. She had wanted to tell Bill, that she was not the same woman she had been then, and how that made her sad, made her afraid. Because she did love him, without question, and she feared that would be impossible to hide. She no longer had the convictions of her more liberal innocent self, who always reasured herself that her private life was no business of anyone else, only herself.

But then here he was. Telling her things about the honour and nobility of his love. And she could not bare it. Could not bear his disappointment in her, or worse his quiet and resigned understanding. So she would not tell him. One day perhaps when she had the strength or the anger to do so. One day when she had the strength to deal with his.

She wrapped his hand in hers. Massaging away the waxy ghosts the removal of his ring had left behind. She sighed. She could at least tell him some of it. Tears made their way down her face. And she finds she cannot not stop them. Her voice cracks. She is breaking here. Finally breaking after all this time and still she isn't sure that he will help her find the pieces and put her back together. She still doubts. She still fears everything between them.  
  
 _"_ I love you too. So much. Too much. And it scares me. I mean it really scares me. I don't know how to deal with it. I have no plan for what to do when it all comes out. I have no plan for how to go forward with it. Which probably means we shouldn't. But I don't care. I want it anyway. So now I'm left with this nervous twitch every time you touch me because I know. We both know, where this, toward what ends, everything between us has been going all day. And it's this huge thing. It doesn't just affect me and you, it affects everyone. It's stupid and I know it. We know it. And we're gonna do it anyway. And I'm afraid of it all. Because this isn't New Caprica anymore, and we aren't just people. And I'm babbling like a lunatic because I don't know what any of it means anymore. Or what I'm supposed to do with any of it. What the God's expect me to do. They don't talk to me anymore, Bill. Its just silence and I've got so many questions. And maybe they never did speak to me, and I'm nuts. Then I think maybe I'm wrong and this path we're following, what if it displeases them? I know you don't believe. But there it is, and I'm even more afraid of their silence than anything else."

  
Bill sat listening attentively to it all. Watching the way her animated hands moved, noting the cadence of her voice as it jumped up and down. The desperate and excited way it had about it. This was not all of it. He was sure. He could feel something else there, burning between the lines. He was as sure of that as he was sure of the prescient knowledge that their had once been another man, a man who had not honoured her. A man who had made her fear everything he wanted to give her. He supposed he should be afraid of it. Afraid that she would not tell him. But somehow he was not. Somehow he knew that like so many of the things Laura worried about it was not nearly as important as she imagined it was. In fact most of it was bullshit. She just hadn't realised it yet. He put an arm around her shoulders and urged her to lean against him. She curled her bare feet underneath her and laid her head in the crook of his arm, her hands played with the buttons on his uniform.

_This is like New Caprica._ They both think it. Sighing their contentment to each other. The rest of it seems to matter less and less as the seconds tick by. The rhythm of their breathing is synchronous, and with her head pressed against him she can hear his heartbeat. She thinks the combination is like music. She loves this, the perfect fragments of time, she is gifted with. She knows then she has not been deserted. He strokes her hair.  
  
"It seems to me that you're placing an awful lot of pressure on tonight. I may get performance anxiety."   
  
The effort of keeping in her giggles causes her to snort with laughter, and she feels before she hears his corresponding laugh beginning deep in his chest. They both think that it feels good just to laugh.  
  
"Seriously though, do you really believe that sleeping together is going to change anything? Will leaving things the way they are change anything? Will it change the way we already feel? The way we act? So far as I can see the damage is already done. What's more I think the fleet already thinks it knows more about us than we know about ourselves. They like it. It's comforting. Who are we to disappoint them? To tell them in our actions that the hope of love, that the hope of a life is dead after all?" _  
_  
"Do you really think they know?" __  
  
" Do you really think it matters?"  
  
She sighs. She had this same conversation with Richard. So long ago now. Only this time she really cares because there's more at stake than political careers. She knows that Bill will refuse to believe it when she tells him that she fears what will happen. The political fall out that will inevitably ensue once some over-keen journalist pokes his or her nose in where it doesn't belong. And already there are pictures of them looking for all the worlds like they are in love, and there are no doubt phone records and meetings that always go longer than is seemly.  
  
"It might be ok now. They might even like the idea of it now; while it's only rumour, innuendo and the odd touch they only think they've seen. It'll be different after it's smeared all over the papers, after its prime time listening over the wireless. They'll make it seem dirty, and its not. It's beautiful. And I don't want them to make it anything else."

He can't help but kiss her then. It is long. Languorous. Erotic. He wonders just who he thinks he's kidding with words like that. She is sitting almost on top of him. They are on his couch, making out like teenagers. He tries to pull away. He hasn't finished talking. But she has other ideas and bites down on his lip, pulling her back to him. Holding his head tightly in her hands as she pushes her tongue into his mouth. She feels his cock harden underneath her and suddenly her stomach flips. She feels empty and desperate. He ignores it. Finds the strength to pull away. Her eyes are wild. Their breathing is heavy.  
  
"Laura. Stop. You have to stop worrying. We'll deal with it when and if it happens."

He takes off his glasses and pinches at his nose closing his eyes for a brief second, before he looks at her with all the intensity he can muster in his extraordinary blue eyes. She knows she is lost in that moment. She knows she cannot make herself care enough about decorum and responsibility to stop this now.  
  
"Besides its not like they couldn't find the evidence to write something like that now, if they wanted. But they haven't. There's a reason for that. I'm sure."   
  
And he's right she knows. The damage is already done. The evidence against them is already there. If anyone chose to look. By some miracle, it seems they are to be left alone. For now at least. She will try hard now to believe this will all be ok.  
  
"Yeah. They're too busy writing about how severely unhinged their megalomaniac President is."  
  
She says as she takes off her glasses and leans over him to place them on the coffee table. He grabs her round her waist and pulls her on top of him.  
  
"Well, you know, they may have a small point."   
  
She punches him hard in the arm.  
  
"Hey!"  
  
"Call me a megalomaniac again and there will be no sex for you tonight." _  
  
_"First of all I didn't. You called yourself a megalomaniac. And Second...there's going to be sex?" __  
  
"Not the way you're going."

She snuggles deeper into his chest. This is so like New Caprica. With his arms around her and the easy teasing, flirting chatter. She can almost believe they are there, and she finds it hard to believe how much she longs to be in that place of horrors, because for one night, it was heaven and she had breathed of it deeply. She had not cared then. Had not needed to. She had just been a woman, not the President. She hadn't a care in the world that night. She didn't want to now. but she supposed they should talk about it, although in a way, talking about New Caprica and how that night was different from the reality of their situation now, was all they had done all night.  
  
"Read to me."He strokes her hair and tips her chin upwards so that she is looking at him. She points to the book still sitting in his lap.  
  
"What?" _  
  
_"Read it to me .The part when they're on the sofa."  
  
"The bit on the sofa? Really?" _  
  
_"Yes." He is laughing at her again.  
  
"I like the poem he reads to her." _  
  
_"And it's kind of hot." __  
  
" Shut up and read."

He doesn't dare to point out to her that he can't do both.

Bill finds the page easily. The spine is broken at that page and it opens of its own accord. He suspects she has read it over and over again. Just like he has:  


**"I buried It in my sleep:**  
 **In the bright black earth of in-between.**  
  
 **Amongst the sizzle pop of white noise ...(I still dream)....**  
 **...You will never find it.**  
  
 **I thought of your stories:**  
 **All your travels beyond the mole hill grass.**  
  
 **Then, there was nowhere to hide It.**  
 **You had been.....(I saw you)....everywhere**  
  
 **It soared with your voice.**  
 **In my eyes It glistened....**  
  
 **...An aberration.....In the blue canvas half-light.**  
  
 **We stretched out like schoolgirls:**  
 **Buried our heads....(silencing).... laughter...**  
  
 **You though of her.**  
  
 **And I Buried It."**  
  
  
"I love that. It makes me cry. It says everything I want to say about that night. On New Caprica..."  
  
" I know. Shh....I'm reading."

  
**"She found she had nothing to say. For the poem had said it all, said it in ways she hadn't even thought about. It was as if her heart had opened spilling her blood, her life force, the part of her soul that was ever his, had fallen from her with his words. She was his now to do with what he would. And when she thought about it, she knew there was very little she could say that would make a difference. After all this time, after everything that could be said had been said, it came down to a single moment. It would be silent. It would be frightening. Terrifying and awesome. Just like it should be. Just like they'd both imagined. After everything, it couldn't be any other way. It was time to find out which way the blood would run."**  
  
"You stopped before the good bit."  
  
He moves out from underneath her, making her sit upright. Standing, he offers her his hand. She raises an eyebrow in a show of confused interest, and takes his hand.  
  
"Come on." He pulls her up to stand beside him.  
  
"Where are we going?" __  
  
"To build a cabin."  
  
He grins as he draws her through the room and sits her down on the edge of his bunk, before kneeling between her open thighs. Incredulous at his actions she pushes against his shoulders. She is not a woman easily led, even when she's being led to exactly where she wants to be. He did not move. She tries a different tact, moving a hand from his shoulder to trail over his chest. The chest she so loved to be held close to. So wanted to feel naked and hot against her skin.  
  
"Bill...." She fingers the tanks underneath his unbuttoned tunic as she speaks.  
  
" I hate to tell you this, but it's not big enough in here to build a cabin."   
  
He leans into her, planting small kisses along her neck, paying particular attention to that sensitive place just beneath her ear, the spot he has caught her playing with on a number of occasions. He smells the mint of her shampoo and something else, His hand is in his hair, holding her head firmly to one side. And she knows this is it. This is the moment when it all falls apart. Or holds together, and is stronger for their bond. He whispers in her ear. His breath sweet and heavy.  
  
"It's a metaphorical cabin."

" A Metaphor for what?" she asks.

He kisses her again. Lips trailing a line from lips to cheek, before making their way along her neck and dipping into the barely there cleavage revealed in the neckline of her shirt. Bill raises his hand to it, toying with the buttons. His progress is slow and precise. Determined. A button for each truth they hold, shakily, cautiously between them. They are both afraid, for these truths are transient. Yielding and conditional. Dependant on the context of each moment. They are both afraid. Expectant of the next moment, a moment in which the context might change, taking these, their desperate truths to each other, far out of reach. They are afraid they might lose themselves. Disappear along with them. And Bill cannot have that. He refuses to believe. He will do anything to keep her here with him in this moment.

"You know for what." the first button. "For a Life." The second " For us together." and another "A place where we have time to spare." and another. "Time for each other." and another. He parts her shirt reverently. Brushing the silky fabric from her arms to pool on the bunk behind her, as he utters the final truth, they both know: this cannot be forever. This will always happen in stolen fragments of time. Taken from elsewhere and gifted to each other with the impossibility of their love. " Whatever time we have, I want to share it with you"

Laura thinks she should hate him. Hate him for the words he does not speak, hate him for his fear that its only a matter of time before the cancer returns, to rip her away from him. Hate him because she fears it too. Hate him for the thousand silent betrayals he has laid upon her over the years. He has loved her all this time, and all this time he has refused to show it. Denied them this. But there have been moments stunning moments of subverted time, where it has leaked through the cracks, in the books they have shared, in evenings together, in a kiss given in cowardice, in safety, when she was sick and dying and barely able to stand on her feet let alone respond the way she would have liked to. She thinks there was love, even in his moment of rejection. In his recitation of their responsibilities there was the hope for this. But until now he had played it safe. He had left her abandoned to the fates and that betrayal had hurt more than all the big ones put together. More than Kobal, more than New Caprica. She knows she should hate him for all of this. But she doesn’t. She can’t. There is no more room left in her heart for hate. Hate has eaten her alive. Pain has closed her off from life. Now she must try forgiveness, she must try to let herself be loved and live. She must try to believe that she deserves this.

"I’m not going anywhere." She touches him. A hand to his face, there are tears in her eyes. For a second her world is still. Even as she says it she fears it might not be true. Even now she is worrying about her appointment with doc Cottle tomorrow, about Baltar’s trial , about working conditions in the fleet, about her precarious position as President. She worries for all the things that the dawn will inevitably bring. She is afraid it will come all too early, shining ever outward, hopeful and destructive, with rosy fingers. Then his hands are on her breasts, circling each nipple through the fabric, teasing. Bill is right there in front of her. Kneeling between her legs. He pinches her nipples hard. And she does not think.  
  
"Oh…God’s yes."   
  
Bill is enamoured of her lace covered breasts. He hasn’t seen lingerie in a long time, and had never though to see it again, here at the end of the worlds. He cups her in both hands, biting sucking and kissing every visible inch of her visible flesh, before drawing down the left cup and taking her nipple into his mouth, caressing the lace mound of her other breast, he cannot bare to take it off completely. Laura smiles at his enthusiasm. This is her good bra, the sexy one, the only one she owns. The one she put on this morning in anticipation of this. Because, Gods she had wanted this, had thought of it for so long. She had fantasised that it would be like this. She had imagined that his passion would be so full of anger that it would be tangible. Laura had desired it, dreamed of being frakked hard with it on the sands of New Caprica. She knows he is angry, angry at her. Though he would never admit it. Does not know it himself. Consciously he is angry at the injustice of it all. She wants his anger. In some masochistic way she needs it. Needs to know him in his fear. She thinks that through it she might be forgiven, through this they might both find some peace.

He holds her nipple between his teeth, clamping it and running his tongue over the tip, causing her to arch into him at each pass. She is dying for him to touch her properly. She feels the hard empty void of it deep and tight in her body. Her cunt is wet just with the thought the anticipation of it. Her hands are in his hair urging him on. She is whimpering, strange, peculiarly un- presidential sounds that she will later be embarrassed by.  
  
"mmgm…mmgm…Bill, Bill…Please…please take it off."

He raises his head from her breast. Looks menacingly into her eyes, his breath comes in hard whispers. "No." His hands are running up her thighs, taking her skirt with them, he slips his hands underneath her, squeezing her arse, and pushing her up off the bunk, her skirt is pushed upward until it sits bunched around her waist. He sets her down and runs his hands around the top of her thighs until his thumbs rest on her, the slightest of barely there brushes against her clit through satin. He raises his head and sees one of the most glorious sights in the universe; Laura Roslin playing with herself. The cups of her Bra have been pushed aside, and she alternates between pinching and flicking her nipples into hard rosy knots, before soothing them with the pads of her fingers glistening wet from her mouth.

He kisses her once just behind her ear, and runs his tongue over the same spot. It’s all he has time for before Laura pulls his head to her and devours his mouth, grinding into his hand desperate to move this along. To feel his touch on her bare skin. She breaks the kiss her eyes boring into his with equal menace. "Bill.. I swear…Oh..Frak." her warning is cut short as he grinds the ball of his hand against her and draws his fingers upward stroking her slit through her panties. He feels a gush of her wetness bleeding through the thin fabric. His cock strains against his pants with the thought of it. She is wet. Wet for him. This is her. This is life. She is alive. They are alive. Not just living. The thought makes him more determined than ever to do this for her, to give her what she needs. Wants. What she most desires. He thinks he wants to know her fantasies. He thinks they might be like his, and she is pushing against him rubbing herself against his hand.

"Bill…please…I need.. I need…" Her breath hitches. The words are stuck in her throat. He looks up at her then. He thinks she might be crying. But all he sees Is Laura, elbows locked behind her, bracing herself against the rack, Bra straps half way down her arms, breasts bared to him, skirt bunched round her waist, sex and wildness and fear reflected back at him, and he knows his fantasy of her was right. This will be anything but the reverent love making, he had imagined she deserved, had imagined she might want. Her eyes, her voice, begging him, told him he had been wrong.

His knees creak as he stands to remove his clothes, but as his hands reach the buckle of his belt, and he kicks his pants and underwear away, he could care less. He realises that Laura has been staring at him the whole time. He grins at her and a giggle escapes her lips at the thought of his inadvertent striptease. Still laughing she pushes herself off the bunk and release the clasp of her bra, dropping it to the deck, her skirt, creased beyond redemption joins it a moment later. She will worry about it tomorrow. She looks at Bill as she hooks her thumbs into her panties and draws them down her legs kicking them away. He cannot help it. She is glorious. Naked porcelain white skin, framed by fiery red hair, breasts just begging to be licked and legs…oh her legs, he cannot finish the thought. He is achingly hard, and he grasps his cock with his own hand stroking it firmly from root to tip as he watches her remove her panties and kick them away. Before taking up her previous position on his bunk, only this time she bends both legs up to rest on the ledge of the bunk. She is completely bared to him, pink and glistening in the half light of his quarters, and he cannot move for wanting her.   
  
"Come to bed Bill."

Her voice snaps him out of his reverie. He is not a man that needs to be told twice, well, not in this situation at any rate. As he nears her she scoots back onto the rack in an attempt to make room for him. But he will have none of it. He grabs her ankles and pulls he back to the edge of the bunk before kneeling between her wide open legs. She looks at him quirking an eyebrow in a silent question.

"Uh…uh.. I have plans." his hand clasps the back of her knee, caressing the legs he has long fantasised being wrapped around him in various positions. Now he makes it a reality as he lifts first one legs and then the other to rest on his shoulders. He takes her hand and kisses it. Before raising up to kiss her belly button, causing her to pull her legs back and squirm. "Bill..what the hell are you…oh my God’s yes."

She is taken by surprise at the feel of his tongue on her pussy, her head drops back and she lowers herself onto her elbows. His tongue works her fast, flicking at her clit from side to side, before he sucks it into his mouth, pulling it from its hood and giving it the same attention he earlier paid her nipples, before releasing it and lathing it with long hard strokes of his tongue. Repeating the manoeuvre over and over again. The feeling is intense, on the brink of too much and Laura bucks into him each time her draws her into his mouth. Bill moans into her. Her slit is weeping clear, salt sweet juices he has to taste. He runs his fingers up her making her clit slick with her cum, he continues to pinch and rub it as his tongue moves to lick at her folds. With his other hand he parts her folds and dips his tongue inside her. It is too much, her body convulses in mixed signals, and she tightens her legs around him, in an attempt to deny him access to her while all the while bucking into him an pawing at his head, desperate for him to stay, and desperate for him to stop. "oh..mmmgh ..mmmgh..mmm..please please..have to stop..yeah..yeah just there..mmgh..no!"

She curls herself up raising her legs higher, her feet on his shoulders as she bucks into him and tries to roll away from his mouth at the same time. Bill stops and places a hand on her stomach to steady her, as he runs a single digit down her slit, from clit to anus, he presses against her there and her hips jump off the bed. She starts to scream before she remembers where they are and bites down on her lip to stop it. Bill watches his fingers playing with her. Her clit is large and swollen as he flicks at it. She is so wet, and he feels great pride in himself at having caused it. He looks up at her face, in a voice quiet and contained he asks her:  
  
"What Laura?…What do you need? What do you want." as he continues to play with her languidly.  
  
"Please...Please Bill." her words are punctuated by her grinding against his hand in fits and starts. "Please. I need you inside, need more…harder."

He pushes two thick fingers inside her, hard and firm as she rocks against him, using her legs wrapped around his shoulders for leverage. "Yess..yes more..more fingers." He adds another. She is tight and slick around him, he needs to be in her, needs to feel her gripping and releasing around his cock the way she is around his fingers right now. But first he must make her come. As he takes her clit into his moth once more he thrusts his fingers into her once, twice before curling them upwards pressing against the inner wall of her cunt and moving them from side to side. Her body goes ridged, her cry a strangled "ngh.agh.." as her hands grab desperately at the sheets, her orgasm coiling tighter and tighter deep within her, before she bucks uncontrollably into him, she bites into her hand, trying to be quiet and failing miserably. Her release sounds as a series of strangled keening whimpers as Bill rides the waves with her, he thinks it’s the most incredible sound he’s ever heard her make. His hand never stops moving and his mouth is still on her, his eyes staring up at her watching her come.

Laura is sure that she has passed out, she remembers a flash of light and then blackness, like the beginnings of a vision. But then there is nothing. She hears, sees and feels nothing. Then as she comes to, she is dimly aware of Bill’s hand still moving within her, and then the sharp unbearable ticklishness of his tongue on her over sensitised clit. She pulls his head away her hand clutches at his wrist. "Bill stop..stop. I can’t anymore. Too sensitive." He takes his hand and his mouth from her and she is sure he has stopped, until she feels his hand come up to cup her as he takes her legs from his shoulders and moves up over her. His mouth is on her neck, on her breasts, on her mouth and she is shocked at how turned on she becomes at the taste of herself there. "mmm.." she moans into his mouth. They smile at each other and he brushes her hair lovingly away from her face. She can feel the hardness of him pressed between them and she reaches for it. "No." he says grinding his fingers hard into her clit for emphasis.   
  
"I’m gonna last for about three seconds if you touch me."  
  
"Bill.. I don’t need…" 

Then his mouth is on her breasts, he rubs frantically at her clit and she is flying again. "oh …oh oh god’s please stop..please.. I can’t…" she is crying desperately. But she does. It is harder than before and afterwards she rolls away from him, laying out on the bunk her hands over her face. "oh My god’s.." she is laughing, hysterically. She doesn’t think she could stop if she tried. Her legs are cramping and her back hurts from grazing against the edge of the bunk. And it feels wonderful. Bill’s hands caress her torso as he joins her there. Wrapping his arms around her and pulling her to him from behind. She is shaking.  
  
"Are you all right?" 

"Yes…I, I...this has never happened before but I think I’m still coming." she says unsure and incredulous. She doesn’t believe it herself. He cups her breasts and kisses her straining his neck to reach. She sighs into him as he slips a finger into her. Just holding it there feeling the tiny intermittent spasms of her aftershocks around it. She is indeed still coming. Laura reaches around and strokes his cock. Grinding her arse into him "Frak me, Bill" He removes his hand and turns her in his arms. She wraps her leg around him as he takes hold of his cock and pushes into her, rolling them so that she is laying on her back. He surges into her and withdraws until only the tip of his erection is buried in her. He does it again and again, his rhythm becoming harder and faster as he revels in the feel of her, the smell of her hair as he buries his head in her neck, the smile of contented pride on her face when she hears him cry out to the God’s he does not believe in, and knows that he can feel her consciously working him, tightening and then releasing her inner muscles around him, while rocking her hips in counter rhythm to his own. Her nails are leaving welts and scratches over his back, her teeth bite into his shoulder as she tries not to cry out when he bottoms out inside her.

"Yess…just there. Right there do it again.." she breathes into his neck. Sweat is pouring off him, as he sits back and snaps his hips back into her while pulling her to him. He is frantic. Desperate. "Frak Laura…shit I can’t. Talk to me Laura. Tell me how it feels.."

She smiles at that, who would have imagined that the Admiral likes to talk dirty? She had hoped that he would. Because she loved doing it. Couldn’t help it really, and hearing her name like that only urged her on to her own release.  
  
" Oh..Bill, so thick. I feel so full...keep going…yess. Right there. Right there, uh..uh..I love it when you bottom out like that…say it. Say my name.."

"Laura…" She uses his shoulders to pull herself up and sit on his lap. She kisses his neck and scrapes his nipples with her nails as she moves against him in tight circles. One hand grasps the side of his neck tightly as she reaches down with the other to play with his balls. Eyes locked all they see in this moment is each other. "Come for me Bill..Come for me." her back arches as she shudders around him. She goes limp in his arms, hanging onto his neck for dear life. He pushes her back onto the rack, thrusting into her once, twice more before he comes in her, growling, shouting his release.   
  


***

__  
  
  


Her hands are everywhere, on his face, on his lips, behind his neck, on his arms, pulling him to her. There are tears of joy in their eyes and smiles on their faces. He leans into kiss her. Laura burst into giggles, avoiding his lips and hitting his chest, as she pushes him off her. He grabs her waist pulling her to lay half on top of him, as he joins in, laughing at her giggle fit. It passes as suddenly as it started. Bill strokes Laura’s hair and places kisses on her forehead. "Not exactly the reaction I was going for, but I can live with it." She sighs in contentment and runs her hand along the scar on his chest, only now paying attention to it.

Laura props herself up on his chest. A sleepy grin adorning her face. He brushes a hand against her cheekbone.  
  
"You do realise what we just did right?"  
  
"Sure, we just had very loud, very angry, very wild sex."  
  
"Yes…we did." her hands are playing in his hair  
  
"And nothing blew up." his hands are painting invisible pictures on her beautiful shapely back  
  
"No..it didn’t" 

Her fingers run along his bottom lip. He kisses them, back and front before placing a single kiss on her wrist. Laura leans down and captures his lips. Her hand still entangled in his. She lays her head back down on his chest. She can hear his heartbeat. She sighs. " I think my skirt’s ruined." He holds her closer to him. He hopes he can always protect her this easily.   
  
"I love you."   
  
He is shocked to hear her say it. He had been careful not to all evening for fear that it would push her away, for fear that it was still to difficult for her to hear let alone say. All he had hoped for was to have this time together. The rest he was sure could be worked out. But she had said it, and his heart is happy, deeply content in the knowledge of it. He kisses he cheek just below her eye.  
  
"…Love you. I think its going to be all right Laura." she knows that he isn’t talking about her skirt.  
  
" Yes, I think it is."   
  
They are quiet for a long time, each of them content to lay in each other’s arms. Laura’s breathing evens out and he thinks she might be asleep. As a test he asks:  
  
"Do you miss it?"  
  
"Miss what?" Laura’s voice is thick and groggy with almost sleep.  
  
"Home. Caprica." she opens her eyes at that. She is worried where this is going.  
  
"Not much. Not anymore. I try not to think about it. But there are things I miss."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
" I miss cheese. You know the really stinky blue stuff you could buy in the colonial market. Near the metro station. That, and a few days ago I would have said sex. But I guess you’ve got that covered."  
  
"Guess I do" she snuggles against him, he thinks it is adorable, and for now he is content to watch her sleep. Or he will be once he clears up the matter of the cheese. He understands the craving for certain foods, normal stuff like chocolate or toast or bacon. But..  
  
"Cheese, Laura? Really?"   


There is no answer. She’s fast asleep. He pulls her closer to him and send out a prayer to anyone who might be listening. He hopes that he will be given the time, even if it is allotted to him in stolen fragments, to find out everything about the weird and wonderful crazy and adorable woman who is at this moment, exactly where she should be: In his bunk. Asleep in his arms.

 

 


	4. Goodnight, Madame President

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill and Laura are about to get busted, and Laura knows it. A/R of course with a little side of Tory. But not like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill and Laura are about to get busted, and Laura knows it. A/R of course with a little side of Tory. But not like that.

All in all it had been a quiet and productive day. Laura signed off on the latest ration allocation proposals, closed the folder and placed it on top of the out pile on her desk. Yes. It had been a good day. It was a good compromise. Good plans. The fleet would be happy. Laura closed her eyes, leaned back into the plump leather of her chair and sighed in contentment.

_Silence. Silence is Golden. Hang on....when was the last time the fleet had been so completely still. So silent. Come to think of it when was the last time it had been this quiet on Colonial One?_

Her nails dug in to the arm rests of her chair. Hesitantly Laura opened a single eye, then the other. She studied the room carefully. Not a thing out of place. She closed her eyes again. She listened. All she could hear was the faint hum of the engines. No Radio chatter. No Tory. No phones ringing. No movement beyond the half opened curtain that separated her office from the rest of the ship.

_It’s only 6pm and no one’s here._ _We’ve been busted._

_Oh, come on Laura, there’s no way you can know that. Just a feeling. Doesn’t mean anything._

_Bill._ Lately, he was the voice of conscience in her head. Pushing her. Questioning her. Challenging her and reassuring her. Just as he always had in reality. That part was fine. That didn’t disturb her. It was the fact that now it was also his voice in her head promising her she had nothing to fear from the new turn their relationship had taken, only a few weeks ago, it was the fact that, not even in her mind, did she argue back. She had never expected that. Never expected that kind of stupidity from either of them.

_Nothing has changed Laura. We’re still the same. We just get to do the Fun stuff now too._

He had told her that last week, grinning at her like an idiot, leering at her absurdly. She should have slapped that smiling leer off his face. She had frakked him instead. Right over his dining table of all places. She should have been concerned after the incident in the ward room where he had taken her so hard against the bulkhead that she still had six evenly spaced rivet shaped bruises down her back, and a large bump on the head to prove it. She should have known she was loosing her mind, when she had found herself down on her knees in his ready room, Her tongue languidly tracing the huge vein that ran down the right side of his cock, while her hands cupped and fondled his balls. Her pelvic muscles clenched, rolling desire resting there dull and heavy at the memory of it: he had never once taken his eyes away from hers.

She should have been afraid. But in those stolen moments together she had felt nothing but want. It was still new. Still so terrifyingly fragile. And hot. So....incredibly ..hot. The physical pull she felt, the need that pulsed through her every time he touched her. The deep slow burn she felt just thinking of him. It shouldn’t be like this. This was what she had been afraid of for so long, that love would consume them both. That they would break each other with it. It was irrational she knew. They still did their jobs. The fleet was as safe as it ever was. The problem was that such considerations always came afterwards. Along with the Guilt. The Embarrassment. _We need to stop this. We need to be sensible. We’re going to get caught._ _If we haven’t been already._

They needed to talk. Tonight. She would not be distracted this time. She would not let him near her. Not let him touch her. There would be no kissing. No teenage groping and make- out session on his couch. There would certainly be no sex. It was a good plan. It _was_ a good plan until the most probable outcome of their scheduled dinner meeting flashed before her still closed eyes. She saw herself bent over Bill’s desk, skirt pushed up over her hips, her bare breasts grazing the rough wooden surface. She saw his hands on her arse. A single finger playing down the crease, painfully slowly, lower and lower, dipping inwards to test the wetness there. She could almost feel the ghost of his cock entering her now, the thick, delicious slide of it.

_Oh Gods' help me..._

Laura opened her eyes, straightened up in her seat. Her hands at her temples hoping to massage away the wanted/unwanted erotic imagery. _We could have this conversation over the phone. It was secure. There was no one here. Bill would be in his cabin by now._ Her hand reached for the phone. _Yes, it was much safer this way._

“Madame President?”

_Frak._

Laura’s head snapped up. She looked for all the world like the kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Madame President. If you have a moment,there is a story in most of tomorrow’s papers that I feel should be brought to your attention.”

_Too Late. Here it comes._

Laura took a moment to compose herself. Lacing her fingers together she leaned forward. Her icy green stare focussed entirely on her presidential aide.

“Tell me, Tory. How do you do that?” Laura was stalling, and she knew it. Trying to distract Tory from the matter at hand. She knew it would get out. Knew that it was inevitable. Knew that the way they’d been behaving it would be sooner rather than later.

“I’m sorry. How do I do what, Madame President?”

“That...That stealth walking thing. I didn’t even realise you were there.”

“I’m sorry. Just light on my feet I guess. Excuse me, Madam President, but this is quite serious.”

Laura pushed herself back further into the chair, her back rigidly straight. As she listened to the barely contained emotion in Tory’s voice, she physically preparing herself for the unpleasantness that was about to ensue. Laura smiled. It was the only smile of hers that Bill hated. The one that didn’t quite reach her eyes. It was the one that said back off. The one that said push me into a corner now and you’re gonna regret it. Her voice was low, deliberate.

“It’s very quiet here, tonight. Is that your doing or is there a party going on that I wasn’t invited to?”

“ A Little of both, actually. There’s a strategy meeting going on below deck, we’re attempting to fix this little mess.”

The sharp slap of a newspaper hitting the desk, followed by the dim thud of Tory’s hand, pointing at the picture.

“Is it true?”

Laura felt like she’d been slapped in the face. There it was. Her shame. Her guilt. Their love in black and white for all the fleet to see. It was a beautiful picture. If it had been any other couple she would have thought it sweet. Two lovers saying goodbye...

_Two Nights ago. Bill had walked her to the hatch of his quarters. All gentle wispy touches. A brush of her arm against his. His hand on the small of her back. The goodbye kiss almost turning to something more. Stopped in its tracks. The hatch opening. Her not wanting to let go of his hand, as they both stepped out into the corridor. His hand round her waist pulling her body against his. Foreheads pressed together. Noses touching. Eyes closed. Just like that night two weeks ago; the conversation about a cabin, that had changed everything. Hers, the deepest of sighs at the memory. His voice, the barest of whispers:_

_“Stay.” The want in Bill’s voice._

_“I can’t” The regret in her own_

_“I know. Thought I’d ask anyway. Just in case.” The full smile she loved, tinged with resignation. She had backed away a single step. A smile pulling at her own lips. “Goodnight Bill.”_

_The brief inclination of his head. Feigning the respectful and proper goodbye that did nothing to hide the knowing smirk plastered across his face “Goodnight...Madame President.” She was sure she’d imagined the bright flash of light. Made herself believe it was her eyes adjusting to the bright strip lighting of the corridor after the warm yellow light of Bill’s cabin._

_Apparently Not. Still if this was all they had. They could work with it. It could be explained. It could be spun...._

 Then she saw it. Bill’s quiet sweet farewell made livid and dirty in cheap ink. The headline read: **_Goodnight, Madame President._**

“Is it true?”

Laura’s eyes moved rapidly between the paper and Tory’s face. She was surprised at the anger in the cracking tone of her voice. The disappointment she found in her face. There was hardly any point in denying it now. Yet there was something in Tory’s tone, something behind her eyes she did not expect, that made her hesitate. Made her answer barely audible.

“Yes.”

Tory’s hand snatched back the offending article.

“Do you love him?”

Laura was taken aback. Tory’s reaction was about more than being left out the loop, there were tears barely contained. Sorrow and pain. Real pain. _Oh..Tory._ She was sorry to say it. But she had to. It was the truth.

“Yes. Very Much.”

Tory nodded once. Choked back tears that Laura had been sure were about to fall. Then straightening her suit, she was all business again.

“I’ve spoken to Playa, there’s audio. She has it. She’ll keep it. But she’ll want the exclusive in return.”

Laura’s hands slammed down on the desk so hard that she made Tory flinch. Her voice full of quiet rage:

“My private life is my own. I won’t dignify this rubbish with a response, let alone substantiate it with a..a ...tell all tabloid exclusive, I can’t believe..”

“Madame President, with all due respect, refusing to acknowledge the story is the worst thing you can do here. You are not the secretary of education anymore, and as much as I hate to say it, the public are going to be a lot harder on a female president, than they ever were on Richard Adar. You won’t get away with it this time...”

“How dare you..”

“Madame President!...Please! We need to buy time. We need to keep Playa at bay while we figure out what to do. We need to control the story, and not let it get out of control in the next news cycle. So I need to know everything. I need when’s. I need where’s. I need how long’s and I need to know who else knows, so I can get to them before the press do.”

Laura had grown tremendously still during Tory’s tirade. _She’s right. She’s right._ Laura took her hand away from her chin. She took her glasses off and cradled them, looking down at them and fiddling with them in her hands. She nodded her consent slowly as she raised her head and made eye contact with Tory.

“Well, I hate to think how that would have sounded without the due respect..”

The lifeline of laughter stretched out between them. They both broke at the same time. Snorts, turning to hysterical laughter that left tears in their eyes. Then there was silence. Again. The calm before another storm. Tory sat down on the other side of the Presidential desk, hoping to restore Laura’s authority and her own respect for her office, she settled in for a long evening.

She found it difficult to look at Laura. It was not that she didn’t understand. She understood all to well. It was not even the sudden destruction of the wild hope – long clung to- that Laura could ever love her back. She was not that foolish. What she found difficult was the realisation that this was a woman, a fallible, fragile person sitting in front of her. This was no goddess after all. She could fall from grace, she could fail. She could be broken.

She forced herself to look. Her voice was quiet and resigned:

“You should have trusted me. You should have told me right at the beginning. If you had, I could have protected you, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”

Laura sighed. Nodded her acceptance. She was finding it difficult to make her words not stick in her throat.

“Tory?”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

Tory’s eyes blazed, Laura could feel the power of her anger, her fear. Resonating. Bouncing off the walls. Nothing. Just the barest movement of her head bowed forward in acknowledgement of her words. Fleetingly, she wondered if Billy would have reacted in quite the same way. She didn’t think so. He had seen it with his own eyes. He had known before she had admitted it to herself. He had held no delusions about who she was.

“We have a lot to get through.”

“Yes we do. Could you give me a moment? I need to cancel my dinner meeting with the Admiral”


	5. Dirty Pretty Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura knows she has to talk to Bill. She thinks she knows how he will react. She's not even close. This has been a bit of a challenge to myself to see how much I could write in phone conversation narrative without going crazy.
> 
> A smut fest for Valentine's day! Contains Phone sex! Yay! Please be warned this chapter is very graphic and contains anal sex. Well sort of...talk of it anyway. And Tory. but not like that. Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laura knows she has to talk to Bill. She thinks she knows how he will react. She's not even close. This has been a bit of a challenge to myself to see how much I could write in phone conversation narrative without going crazy.
> 
> A smut fest for Valentine's day! Contains Phone sex! Yay! Please be warned this chapter is very graphic and contains anal sex. Well sort of...talk of it anyway. And Tory. but not like that. Enjoy!

Her hand hesitated above  the phone by her bedside.

_I don’t want to speak to him_

She could never  have imagined she was capable of a thought like that a few hours ago. She didn’t want to. Didn’t really believe it now. It was just that – she knew- she could not hear bear to hear his voice right now. Could not bear to hear his acceptance of the facts she would have to lay out before him. Did not want to hear the calmness of his words. His deathly stoicism, while her own words ripped them both apart. She had to tell him. In the event that it all came out, he needed to know the truth of it before he read it, twisted, and muddied, made into something it never had been. He deserved that much. She knew, no matter how much he denied it, it would hurt him. She was not who he thought she was. She had done this before. She had been stupid and naive, her judgement impaired by lust,  long before she had ever heard the name William Adama.

     It would not matter that he loved her. In her mind it was inevitable. After this, there would always be some small part of him that would never trust her again. Part of him, however small, that would believe the half lies and twisted truths: At worst,  it would be reported something like this:  Laura Roslin was a whore. A power mad school teacher who traded sexual favours for political gain. Look, here’s the proof: A tiny thumbnail of a picture that, by some terrible miracle, had survived the apocalypse in digital form; This is Secretary Roslin leaving the Presidential summer residence in the early hours of the morning.  It wouldn’t matter that It had been 5 years ago, and a lifetime away. It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t what it looked like, not that night anyway. It was close enough to the truth. She could not deny having been there. And now, Look at this, compare and contrast: She’s at it again, this time, in return for  the military’s support of her assumed and dictatorial Presidency. What? You don’t think she actually loves him, do you?

 By the God’s was she angry with him. Irrationally so. But not as furious as she was at herself:

_You made me believe, Bill. You made me so sure that it would be ok. Be fair Laura, Its not like you didn’t push him to it, and its not like you didn’t go willingly. It’s not like you didn’t spend most of the nights after that night on  New Caprica fantasising about it. Its not like you don’t love him beyond reason too. No, It’s not like we aren’t both out of our frakking minds with all of this...._

If anything it had been worse than she could have imagined. Every news service in the fleet was carrying the picture, the picture that said all to clearly; _This is Bill and Laura._ The Admiral and The President were nowhere to be seen. Talk wireless was already running amuck with it. The airwaves were thick with speculation: _well, what do you think, are they or aren’t they?_ That was ok. That they could spin. They had decided on the non-denial denial. Tory would make a brief statement in response to the story at the morning press briefing.

  _...As has always been the case, President Roslin and Admiral Adama continue to work closely together to ensure the continued safety and prosperity of the fleet. It is only natural that they have formed a bond of deep friendship and mutual respect. It is a regrettable state of affairs that a private moment shared between two friends has now become a matter of public record, dissemination and discussion._

She would take no follow up questions. But the worst could still happen. Playa had the audio. Much to Laura’s horrified surprise, Tory had informed her, that Playa was also in possession of a small grainy picture of Laura leaving Richard Adar’s private summer residency. There had always been rumours, gossip, allusions. Playa had been around long enough to remember them. And she’d been a journalist long enough to know where to dig, to put two and two together and come up with six. It wasn’t much. But it was enough. Enough to ruin her. And if she had been able to find it, there was always the risk someone else might too. For now, they’d caught a break. Playa had agreed to sit on it for now. She had no desire to bring down the President. She was holding out for something better. _A Day in the Life bio piece. The Woman Behind the Mask. Full Access._  It was going to cost Laura.

    It already had. She’d never been so humiliated in her entire life. She’d had to sit and tell Tory everything. Hearing her own words, seeing them reflected in Tory’s disappointed eyes. Well, it had made her love for Bill feel dirty, wrong. Even when all the while her inner voice protested  _No. No it’s not  like that at all._

She felt like she’d been grounded. All but the most official contact with Bill had been forbidden. Apparently, her body language around him was key to this ridiculous charade. Key to damage control. She must be careful not to touch him, not to lean into his personal space. Yet she must be careful not to appear cold. Their relationship must not look strained. It was impossible either way. All meetings were to take place in the most public spaces available. Not that that had stopped them before. But all that had to stop now. She sighed at the memory of it. The deep, slow ache in provoked in her. It was just as well really.

   They were permitted one evening conference call per day. That was reasonable. That was comm. Traffic between Galactica and Colonial One that could be easily explained. It was also the only channel of communication that they could be sure was secure. And it would be like this until Playa decided that she had everything she needed to write the piece.

_It sucked. Not that I want to talk to him anyway. I want to be with him. Naked .In his rack. But  I have to talk to him_. It was late, late enough to be too early, but she knew that he would be waiting to hear the verdict. She could almost see him pacing the length of his quarters. wearing holes in his carpet.

     Their earlier conversation had been brief:

_“Adama.”_

_“Bill..”_ her voice had stuck in her throat.

“Madame President. To what to I owe the honour? Is this business or pleasure?” Normally she would have laughed at his teasing, slightly sultry tone. This time it had only made her sigh. That was the problem right there..

“The fallout from both I think.”

“Oh. I see. I take it you won’t be making it to dinner?”

“No.”

“Laura?”

“yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“I’ll be here when you’re done with Tory. You just tell me what we have to do.”

“Ok.”

“It’ll be ok. I love you.”

“I know.”

She hadn’t been able to say it. That’s what had got her into trouble in the first place. She wanted him to know it. More, to believe it. To believe that she had only ever wanted him for the man he was. Not who he was. Now, that was more important than ever. Before she could pick up the phone, the intercom buzzed. It made her jump.

_Tory. The woman seemed to have a sixth sense._

“Yes” She couldn’t keep the sharpness from her voice.

“Madame President, Admiral Adama for you on line one.”

Could it be possible that Tory was aiding and abetting her in the circumvention of her own stringently dictated rules? Her tone softened.

“Tory?”

“Yeah..”

“Thank you.”

“If there’s nothing else Madame President, I’m going to turn in. It’s been a long night.”

“Yes it has. Goodnight Tory.”

“Goodnight, Madame President.”

The intercom went dead. And Laura, once again, found herself hesitating before punching open the line in irritation. She brushed her hair away from her eyes. They might be able to fix this. It might still be ok. But the one thing she never expected it to be was easy.

“Bill.”

“How’d it go? You ok?”

“I had more comfortable nights in Cylon detention.”

 Laura could here Bill shifting on his feet. She could almost feel him flinch. He did not like to be reminded of those times. Hated to think that he had not been there to protect her. Even though she was hardly a woman who needed protecting. She could get herself in trouble all by herself. She sighed.

“sorry..Yeah I’m ok. More embarrassed than anything. Bill...Listen if this doesn’t work, you’re going to be hearing some things. Things you aren’t going to like. So i need you to listen to me now. I need you to know that I never wanted..i mean you must know..i hope you know..how very much i love you. This was never part of some dirty political game for me.”

Silence. Stoicism. Just as she had expected. She was going to crush them both with this. Then he spoke. Cold. Clashing words. Ice against stone.

“No. Now, You. Tell me. What I ever did. What I ever said, what we’ve ever said to each other, that would make you think that I could ever believe that.”

“Nothing. there’s nothing. But I’m afraid, Bill, I’m afraid you might question us, after you hear what I’m about to tell you.” Tears stung at her eyes, the crushing weight of it burned in her chest. Laura stood, picking up the phone cradle, she paced the room, sat down again. Fiddled with her necklace.

“Laura, what ever it is...”

“ I had an affair before Bill...it wasn’t widely known about. There were rumours but never anything concrete never enough for a story to break...but now there’s this picture that’s turned up...which makes this worse. It looks like I have a history of attaching myself to powerful men... it looks a hell of a lot like this is going to look to people who don’t know”

“I know.”

“You Know?! Wait.. you know what?”

“ I don’t know with who Laura, but I figured you’d been here before. The way you acted, the day we first made love. Every time i touched you, in the CIC, you moved away, you flinched, you knew this could burn both of us. And I remember wondering then. Who could have hurt you so badly? Someone who held power, someone with an authority you were afraid of. You knew how carefully we had to tread even then, if I had listened to you then, we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in now.”

“yeah well, its not like I’ve done much backing away from you since then is it? It’s not your fault.”

She couldn’t believe how well, how easily he was accepting this. That couldn’t be right.

“Do I need to Know who?”

Laura leaned back into the arm of the sofa that served as her bed. Head braced in her open palm.

“Richard. Richard Adar” she’d said it so quietly that at first Bill could believe he’d misheard.

“What?”

“You heard me. Don’t make me say it again.”

“You were frakking the president?! And you got away with it, all this time. This is only coming out now?”

“Not if I can help it. And may I remind you, before you get all high and mighty about it. That now it’s you whose _frakking_ the President, as you so delicately put it, and  it’s you and me who have to take control of our public persona’s. It can be done. It can be fixed. But nothing leaves your cabin. We’ve been incredibly stupid. We can’t see each other privately for a while. Not until Playa has finished poking around, and the media storm’s passed.”

“Ok then. How’s this going to work? What’s the plan?”

She explained to him the deal Tory had made with Playa. Explained what would be said at the press briefing in a few hours time, explained that Tory would need to talk to him too, that it was her job to protect the office of the President, explained that he would have to tell her everything. That she would need to corroborate their stories. Fill in the gaps left by their lies and sins of omission, until they had something workable. A story that was airtight, but flexible. The Admiral and the President worked closely together, they were great friends. That was all. By the end, Laura felt like she had explained away everything but the great aching knot of emotion  in the pit of her stomach, where her love, her desire, her pain from this all continued to live. That was real. Even when the words no longer were.

“You’ve got it all figured out haven’t you?”

“Yes, Bill I’ve just spent the last eight hours getting it all figured out.”

“I don’t like it.”

“you think I do?”

“ I’m no good at this. I’m an honest man Laura, it’s not right to bring politics into our private lives.”

“Right or wrong makes no difference. It was there from the moment that we talked about building a cabin on New Caprica. It was there from the first moment you thought about kissing me. It was a package deal from the beginning. You’re not stupid. You knew it. You did it anyway. And so did I.”

“Why?”

“Why?!”

“Why. I want to know why.”

“Because I loved you! I needed you! And in that moment I couldn’t have cared less who knew it.”

“Exactly. All the rest is bullshit Laura, you just don’t know it yet.”

She sighed. Curled her feet underneath herself, and listened to the sound of his steady quiet breathing. He was right, she knew. And he was so very wrong. She had loved Richard, albeit with a quiet tenderness, that fell far short of the intensity, the need, she felt for bill. Still, that didn’t make it more or les real. It was just different. But did loving Richard excuse her actions? Did it make their relationship anymore palatable? Did it make it more acceptable? More appropriate? She didn’t think so. She knew their relationship had been nothing more than a long line of successive mistakes, and just one more times. And if she had made those mistakes, if she had gone willingly then, she feared she might be doing exactly the same here, and If that was so, how did the fact that she loved Bill now, make their relationship any more right? Any more justifiable. It didn’t.

_Love,_ It was just another dirty pretty word like all the rest...

Bill sat down on his couch, and pinched the bridge of his nose, the dim light of the room reflecting off the wire rims of his glasses. Catching the derisive tone in her voice, he was sure she hadn’t meant to say it out loud. He laughed. She was trying to fight it. Just like she fought everything that was good for her.  In that moment he knew that they were going to be just fine. He’d beaten down her defences before. He could do it again.

“To my recollection, Madame President, you’ve never had much of a problem with dirty pretty words before now.”

“..Bill..” her voice was a warning not to push it.

“Love might not make it right, Laura. But it does make it human. It does make it understandable.”

“I think you have to much faith in the critical reasoning skills of the fleet Bill, they aren’t going to react logically to this, they’ll react emotionally and with fear. Even if we go out there tomorrow and declare our undying, unyielding love for each other, and hell will freeze over before I do anything of the kind, all they’ll see, all they’ll react to is too much power concentrated in the hands of two people, who are too close, not to be dangerous.”

“Just.. think about it. Take it to Tory if you want. We can bring it out into the open slowly...I..I just don’t think burying us alive is the answer.”

“Ok.”

“Ok.”

“The last thing I want to do is bury you alive. I’ll be needing my bed warmer, if and when I ever get back there. I miss you already.”

_Hmm.. interesting choice of words_ , Bill thought. He wondered just how far he might be able to push her in the direction of sex. When her mind was already halfway there..

“want you here too. So bad, I can almost see you standing here in front of me. Are you still wearing the black lace underwear you put on this morning? ‘Cause I have to tell you I had plans for that tonight.”

Laura’s breath hitched in her throat at the images his words conjured in her mind. She had to end this conversation quickly before she ended up in another situation that she very much wanted to be in but couldn’t control.

“Bill...that’s no way to talk to your President, I’m hanging up”

“ Wait. One more thing, its just, Richard Adar? Really? Madame President,  I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that your taste in men has improved.”

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them;

“hmm..some people might not agree. I’ll need to collect more evidence before I can come to an informed decision.”

“I’m ready anytime you are.”

“You don’t know how much I want to take you up on that right now.”

“ 'bout as much as I want to take you.”

That did it. Laura broke out in fits of giggles she could not repress. Bill joined her. Laughing at her laughter.

“ I’m sorry...Bill..so sorry. It’s too weird I can’t do it..”

“I think I’m insulted.” He snorted in between deep belly laughs.

“Mending you wounded masculine pride will have to wait. I need to get some sleep...”

“Goodnight Madame President.”

“Bill! Wait! Wait!...”

“I’m still here.”

Laura cleared her throat, armed herself with the sultriest tone she could muster and asked:

“So...tell me again Bill, what am I wearing?”

“Laura, stop. You’re right this is ridiculous. Not to mention, a really bad idea.”

Laura kicked off her shoes, legs unconsciously rubbing together in anticipation of what she couldn’t quite believe she was going to do.  Her hand pulled at  her pink shirt, un- tucking it from her skirt and starting on the buttons.

“You started it Bill. So...finish it.” 

Her voice turned breathy strained almost, as her free hand brushed the swell of her own breasts. Bill hardened at the repetition of sounds he knew so well by now. He shifted on his couch. His own voice was tight with want by the time he spoke. He only hoped she wouldn’t regret this in the morning.

“Laura, what are you doing.”

“Nothing yet. Just thinking about it. So, what am I wearing?”

“The underwear, and that silky slip thing you put on this morning.”

Still clasping the phone to her ear, so she could hear his sharp intake of breath. She unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it. Carefully draping it over the arm of the chair come sofa bed. Trapping the phone between her shoulder and chin she removed her shirt and placed it over her skirt. She pulled back the covers of her bed and laid down. Running a hand down her side from collar bone to hip, and lower, her brief touch barely skimming over the material of her slip where it covered her mound. She had never much cared for this game. But right now, the thought of it. The thought of Bill sitting in his cabin, talking to her with his hand around his thick cock. Well, it was electric. She removed her hand, took a deep steadying breath.

“Ok”

“Where are you?” Bill asked. He needed to be able to see her. Construct her in his mind’s eye, exactly as she was now.

“On my bed.”

“Good. That’s Good. Now Laura, tell me what am I wearing? ”

“Uniform pants. Nothing else.” 

She loved his chest. The feel of it against her, the solid softness of it. Loved being pressed up against it. Loved to kiss her way down it, until she reached his...

“Bill?”

“Yeah”

“Undo the pants. Just...Just push them down. Don’t take them off...” 

The emergence of this new fetish for the feel of rough wool against her skin confused her at times. Right now she didn’t care. This was her fantasy. She could have what she wanted. 

“...and the underwear. Take yourself in your hand. Stroke it...yes.” she gasped.

Laura had placed the phone by the side of her head and now she reached for a breast with each hand, pushing the bra cups and slip down just enough to reach her nipples, pinching them. The image of Bill she had created flashed before her eyes, and her hips rose off the bed, her body begging for the touch of a man, who was not there.

“Oh Gods Bill I can see it. I can see you. Imagine me..Imagine me the way I’m dressed now. Straddling you while I kiss my way down your chest and drop to the floor in front of you. In between your knees. I’m going to take you in my mouth Bill. Just like that day in your ready room. Do you remember? Do you remember how I sucked you off?” 

She knew it was a crude thing to say, but there really wasn’t another term that described what she had done to him that afternoon.

Did he remember? If he lived for another hundred years, he didn’t think he’d ever forget it..

_She’d stormed in. Hadn’t even bothered to knock. He had expected it. Had been waiting for the arse kicking he knew was due to him when she found out about the stockpile of antibiotics that he had ordered held back from fleet wide distribution, a month ago, at Cottle’s request. It made sense really. The military couldn’t protect the fleet if every soldier, pilot and marine that got injured died of sceptic shock. And he knew it was wrong. Knew they were desperately needed in the fleet. He’d already decided on a compromise. Split the stockpile straight down the middle, 50/50. Unfortunately for him. The President hadn’t been informed of his decision yet._

_“What the hell do you think you’re doing restricting the distribution of essential supplies, Bill we’ve talked about this!!”_

_He feigned a look of disinterest as he looked up from his paperwork. He loved her like this. Her body tensed coiled in anger, her hands wild and her eyes that deep green fire. It was exactly the look she got just before she orgasmed. As he watched her, listened to the cadence of her voice, he hadn’t been able to think of anything else. It had become  painfully uncomfortable._

_He put down his pen and interlaced his hands in front of him “Good Afternoon, Madam President. What can I do for you?”_

_That had stopped her short. “What?!  Don’t Madam President me! Haven’t you been listening  to a word  I’ve said?”_

_Without thinking he’d gotten up and walked round to the other side of his desk. She’d stood stubbornly in front of him, he’d reached for her, a smile on his lips. “Laura, you need to calm down. It’s already sorted. The fleet will be getting an extra shipment of antibiotics, one to each ship. First thing tomorrow.”_

_“Don’t touch me. I am so mad at you.... Why are you smiling?” For a minute he’d thought she was going to slap his smart arsed grin clean off his face. He’d laughed. Removed his glasses and set them down on his desk before pulling her to him. This time she did not resist. Neither did she respond.  Her hands remained locked on her hips. Bill, taking his own life into his hands had placed a kiss on her forehead, and raised her chin so she had no choice but to look him in the eye._

_“You’re so sexy when you’re angry.”_

_“Is that the best you’ve got?”_

_He had pulled her tightly against him. Hoping that she would feel what she did to him. She felt him pressing against her hip and took a step away. A mixed look of incredulity and distaste lighting her face as her gaze ran from Bill’s face to his groin._

_“I can’t believe you. I come in here, intending to discuss urgent fleet business with you. And all you can think about is sex.”_

_“You didn’t come in here intending to discuss anything, you barged in here yelling, and I wasn’t thinking about sex until you started raging around;  your anger at me  tensing your body up and lighting your eyes and you looked..”_

_Laura started to relax, more curious now than angry her head tilted to the side._

_“What? What did I look like.”_

_“You looked like you look when you’re about to come.” The look was back. Her eyes wild again as she stepped slowly back into his arms. Her hands rested on his chest as she placed a brief kiss to his lips._

_“And how do you know? Do you make a habit of watching me come?”_

_He kissed her back, briefly before she turned her head away. He brought his hand to rest on her cheek, brushing her soft skin with his calloused hand. “Always.”_

_“Right.” Her eyes locked with his daring him to stop her. As her hand trailed down his chest stopping when she reached his belt buckle. Expertly she flipped the catch open and drew down the fly, sneaking her hand inside the band of his boxers and cupping his balls before sliding her hand up his long rigid cock. “Stop. Not here.” Laura only cocked an eyebrow and kept moving her hand, in a slow and steady rhythm._

_“Laura...what are you doing?” In one motion Laura pulled down his pants and boxers and pushed him back against his desk. “Sit down, Bill. I’m going to watch you come.”_

Yes he remembered it. Remembered her slipping off her panties, hitching her skirt to her waist and dropping to her knees.  Her hands on him. Cupping and fondling his balls. Remembered that look on her face as her tongue sneaked out and her head bent to trace the vein running down the right side of his cock. He remembered the fire in her eyes that warned him: _I’m going to devour you. Take everything from you until there’s nothing left._ and the wet heat of her mouth as she took him in. Remembered bucking into her uncontrollably as her tongue traced his slit and her teeth grazed his head before she relaxed her throat and took him in further than he though possible with each stroke. He hadn’t known where to put his hands.        

 He had wanted desperately to bury them in her hair, to urge her on. To let her know what she was doing to him but he  hadn’t dared. He had gripped and slapped at the table instead. She had stopped suddenly. Released him slowly with a deep moan that reverberated around his cock. Her eyes still on him. She had taken his hands in hers and placed them on either side of her head, with a smile that said _Yes I know exactly what you want._ Sure fingers had continued to stroke him, while her free hand disappeared between her legs. She had whimpered as she took him in again. He had pushed her further to him. Demanded that she take it all. She had whimpered around him as she rocked back and forth coming on her own fingers. 

He remembered that throughout every one of her wild manoeuvres her glasses had still sat primly on her nose. He had realised that never once had she looked away from him. It was the thought of that, of what it meant, that had been his undoing. He remembered that he had cried her name as he came. And now he thought it wasn’t right that he hadn’t had the foresight to care.

He imagined her now, at his feet. The peach silk bunched up around her thighs and straining at her breasts as she moved over him. He wet his hands with saliva, pushing into his curled fist while the other hand squeezed at his balls. It did nothing to mimic the memory of the deep, wet heat of her mouth. 

“I remember. Gods that was good. You did this thing at the end, where you sucked really hard...ugh..Yeah..so good. Thought I was gonna pass out.” 

“hmm...and I’m gonna do it to you again. Right now.” 

Laura continued to squeeze her breasts, she dipped a hand down into her panties, shuddering as she grazed her clit and dipped lower to test the wetness that pooled there. She couldn’t believe, couldn’t understand  how turned on she was thinking about that  afternoon, and imagining the solo re-enactment that was currently underway in Bills quarters.  

“ I can taste you on my tongue”   

She wiggled out of her panties as she listened. She could hear the  catching of his breath and the occasional moan of her name, a litany of indistinct curses and the wet slap of his hand. 

“Frak ...oh Laura there... right there.”

As she slid a finger into herself she imagined it was him and added another. The angle was all wrong. It was nice but  it didn’t feel like him. She thrust harder into herself and let out a frustrated moan. Her thighs spread wide and her legs bent at the knees, she raised herself up to meet each thrust, fingers twisting at a nipple.

“Shit..I love the sounds you make.” 

Bill was imagining her tongue teasing the very head of him, while his own thumb flicked over the weeping slit his other hand stroked progressively faster towards his release. 

“Bill.. I need you to touch me.” 

Her voice strained, desperate for release. Bill slowed his own ministrations so he could concentrate on her pleasure. 

“Ok. Tell me what you’re doing.”

“I ..um. I took off my panties. My legs are spread. I’m playing with my pussy..I can’t ..Frak me...please just frak me.”

“How many fingers?”

“Two.”

“No. You always want more than that. Try three. As you push them into yourself curl them towards you.”

“yesss...that’s it. That’s what I couldn’t get.” She had time to thrust against herself a few more times before he said:

“Now take them out. Suck on your fingers. I want you to taste yourself. Taste what I taste when I go down on you.”

Damn him. She was close. So close and he was going to make her stop. It was his favourite game of late. Driving her right to the edge and bringing her down again. Building a slow aching burn within her that made her white out when it eventually broke.

“Trust me Laura..do it.” As she sucked on her fingers she let out a keening moan, partly for Bill’s pleasure and partly because it was the only vocalisation that she could come up with in that moment that expressed everything she felt.

“Now take off your bra. Leave the slip on. Make your nipples wet for me. Imagine its my mouth on you”

 Laura licked at her fingers before smearing, stroking the wetness across her achingly hard nipples. She cried out for him. She could almost feel his breath on her.

“Now pull the slip back up, flick at your nipples through the fabric.”

 “Ohh..”

“Yeah... that’s it good.” 

Bill’s cock twitched as he envisioned her spread out for him like a wanton on Colonial One. He began to stroke himself harder. 

“Now put those fingers back in. I bet you’re so wet I could slide all the way in, in one stroke.” 

The air circulating around the cabin hit the wetness of her nipples tightening them into harder knots to graze against the silky fabric. She moaned at the sensation.

“Now, play with your clit. Yeah I can see you doing it. See my hands on you in those hard little circles you love.”

“yess.. please more.. I need more.”

“Laura. Do you remember our meeting in the ward room about a week ago? “

“Yes I..remember..still have the bruises. Tell me about it...please I’m almost there...almost there..” 

The hand on her clit grew more frantic, tiny circle turning to hard swipes.

“It was the end of the meeting. You’d turned around to pack your bag. You bent over the table to pick up some files, and you hot arse was just right there in front of me and I had to have you. I pulled you against me and pushed you into the bulkhead. It was fast and hard, and every time I pushed into you, you made this noise..”

“mhmm..”

“Yeah. Just like that.”  He laughed

“mhmm..”

“And just like now...just like now.. I was so close to coming and I thrust harder and harder into you, rubbing at you clit, I wanted ... I want you to come before I did..do. And something incredible happened Laura. I grabbed you’re arse cheeks to keep you steady and my fingers pressed against your anus...and I don’t think I’ve ever felt you come so hard. And gods.. help me Laura I want to take you like that..”

Experimentally, Laura reached down and pressed a finger into herself there. In and out. Wiggling the finger as she did so. Gods it felt good. She rubbed at her clit with her thumb, fingers still buried in her cunt.

“oh I want you to do it...please...mhmm....ugh..” her orgasm was long and hard, it started deep within and spread ever outward, until her whole body shook with it.

“Frak Laura..” As he came Bill imagined her naked and bent over his dinner table, her arse grinding against him as he took her there. Bill growled his release. Shooting his load over his hands.  He was a mess. He cleaned himself off with one of  his tanks and felt immediately embarrassed. There was no way that was going in the general laundry. Zipping himself up he asked:

“Laura..You still there?” 

Laura turned to lay out on her stomach. Still enjoying the aftershocks and sleepy afterglow that was encroaching on her consciousness. She grabbed the phone that had been laying by her ear.

“Yeah ...sort of.”

“What do you mean ..Sort of?” he laughed.

“I mean ..I’m blissed out. What the hell was that all about anyway. That bit at the end?”

“Did you like it?”

Laura sighed. It was not something she liked to admit to. “You know I did... Do. That’s why you brought it up.”

“Its just something for us both to think about.” The understanding,  the tenderness in his voice made her well up.

“I love you.” Her voice sounded sad, sleepy and barely there.

“Always, Laura. Laura?” 

Nothing. He suspected she’d fallen asleep already. He sighed. It was clearly something they needed to talk about. As he closed the line he hoped she’d made herself decent before slipping into unconsciousness. Her room on Colonial One was not the most private of places first thing in the morning.

****

Colonial One 0700

Tory sharply pulled back the curtain that separated Laura’s office from her personal quarters. “Good morning, Madam President.”  She had become slightly concerned when she had heard no movement from within. It was Laura’s custom to be up a good few hours by now. But that was not entirely surprising, considering  the late night strategy meeting they’d held the night before, and then after that, only the gods knew just how late she’d stayed up talking with the Admiral. 

“Madam President?

Still no response.

Tory took a few more cautious steps into the room. She did not like to be here, it was too personal, too entirely Laura’s domain for her to be comfortable. It made her heart ache. What she saw when she entered the quarters didn’t help matters. Her knees turned to jelly underneath her, and she only just made it to the chair opposite Laura’s makeshift bed.

She couldn’t stop staring. And she desperately wanted to turn away. Laura lay sleeping peacefully. Covers had been kicked away in the night. Or had never been made to cover her at all. She wore only a peach slip that did little to cover her glorious legs, nor the swell of her breasts rising and falling with each breath. One hand was cast over her head while the other lay resting across her stomach. The handset of her phone still lay near her head. 

 So she had fallen asleep talking to him. Tory sighed. This would do her no good. She had a job to do. The Presidential office to protect.  She stood and replaced the phone in its cradle, before pulling up the covers. Restoring the modesty of the sleeping President. She reached for her. could not help but stroke her face. She was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, as much as she had tried she could not help loving her. The god’s knew she didn’t want to. With reverent care she brushed a strand of errant hair away from Laura’s eyes, before placing a single kiss on her cheek. She smelled of sex, and the shampoo she had borrowed from her the day before. _And that’s as close as we’ll ever be._ That was ok. She could be happy for them. Still, as she turned to leave, she cursed William Adama. “If you ever hurt her. Intentionally or unintentionally, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.” There was no doubt in her mind that she could.

Tory cast one last look over her shoulder. She needed to go over the morning papers with her but she figured it could wait an hour. She would let her sleep. One last peaceful hour of sated bliss before the walls came crashing down. 

 

To be continued?


End file.
